Quotes about selling
page 7

Olavo de Carvalho photo
Nigel Cumberland photo

“Be able to sell ice-cubes to Eskimos – you may have to!”

Nigel Cumberland (1967) British author and leadership coach

Source: Your Job-Hunt Ltd – Advice from an Award-Winning Asian Headhunter (2003), p.65

Edwin Lefèvre photo
Kapil Sibal photo

“What kids see on the internet is mostly pornography and that is dangerous. The internet is being used as a platform for misinformation, selling spurious drugs and for terrorist activities. It is a great medium but being misused to bring about disaffection among people.”

Kapil Sibal (1948) Indian lawyer and politician

On the internet, as quoted in Kids mostly watch porn on internet, says Sibal http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Kids-mostly-watch-porn-on-internet-says-Sibal/articleshow/16344454.cms, The Times of India (11 September 2012)

Alex Steffen photo
John D. Carmack photo

“It's a good thing Doom 3 is selling very well…”

John D. Carmack (1970) American computer programmer, engineer, and businessman

Having destroyed a rocket test vehicle worth $35,000 USD, Quoted in John Carmack Biography http://www.biographybase.com/biography/Carmack_John.html.

Andrew Tobias photo

“The larger the deductible you choose, the less insurance you are buying. Insurers want to sell insurance.”

Andrew Tobias (1947) American journalist

Source: The Invisible Bankers, Everything The Insurance Industry Never Wanted You To Know (1982), Chapter 9, Too Much Insurance, p. 155.

Amory B. Lovins photo
Alfred P. Sloan photo
Fali Sam Nariman photo
Peace Pilgrim photo

“Spiritual truth should never be sold — those who sell it injure themselves spiritually.”

Peace Pilgrim (1908–1981) American non-denominational spiritual teacher

Appendix III
Peace Pilgrim: Her Life and Work in Her Own Words (1982)

Robert Sheckley photo

““It is the principle of Business, which is more fundamental than the law of gravity. Wherever you go in the galaxy, you can find a food business, a housebuilding business, a war business, a peace business, a governing business, and so forth. And, of course, a God business, which is called ‘religion,’ and which is a particularly reprehensible line of endeavor. I could talk for a year on the perverse and nasty notions that the religions sell, but I’m sure you’ve heard it all before. But I’ll just mention one matter, which seems to underlie everything the religions preach, and which seems to me almost exquisitely perverse.”
“What’s that?” Carmody asked.
“It’s the deep, fundamental bedrock of hypocrisy upon which religion is founded. Consider: no creature can be said to worship if it does not possess free will. Free will, however, is free. And just by virtue of being free, is intractable and incalculable, a truly Godlike gift, the faculty that makes a state of freedom possible. To exist in a state of freedom is a wild, strange thing, and was clearly intended as such. But what do the religions do with this? They say, ‘Very well, you possess free will; but now you must use your free will to enslave yourself to God and to us.’ The effrontery of it! God, who would not coerce a fly, is painted as a supreme slavemaster! In the face of this, any creature with spirit must rebel, must serve God entirely of his own will and volition, or must not serve him at all, thus remaining true to himself and to the faculties God has given him.”
“I think I see what you mean,” Carmody said.
“I’ve made it too complicated,” Maudsley said. “There’s a much simpler reason for avoiding religion.”
“What’s that?”
“Just consider its style—bombastic, hortatory, sickly-sweet, patronizing, artificial, inapropos, boring, filled with dreary images or peppy slogans—fit subject matter for senile old women and unweaned babies, but for no one else. I cannot believe that the God I met here would ever enter a church; he had too much taste and ferocity, too much anger and pride. I can’t believe it, and for me that ends the matter. Why should I go to a place that a God would not enter?””

Source: Dimension of Miracles (1968), Chapter 13 (pp. 88-89)

Aron Ra photo
Shahrukh Khan photo
Heather Brooke photo

“The survival of journalism in the digital age rests on its unique selling point: serving this public interest. Fail or forget to do that, and it has no future.”

Heather Brooke (1970) American journalist

Press Gazette http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/wire/8235 - "Harold Evans, Guido Fawkes, Heather Brookes and Bild on journalism and the public interest", 27 September 2011.
Attributed, In the Media

Natalie Portman photo

“I had a fashion designer tell me that when I wear a dress of his, it sells out across the country because Jewish girls ‘look to me,’ and Jewish girls are the ones that buy expensive dresses. It made me sad, because I want to be an influence in ways other than by a pretty dress.”

Natalie Portman (1981) Israeli-American actress

Interview, Jewish Chronicle, 6 July 2007 http://thejc.com/home.aspx?AId=44797&ATypeId=1&search=true2&srchstr=Natalie%20Portman&srchtxt=1&srchhead=1&srchauthor=1&srchsandp=1&scsrch=0

Will Rogers photo

“But it’s just as Mr. Brisbane and I have been constantly telling you, "Don’t gamble"; take all your savings and buy some good stock, and hold it till it goes up, then sell it. If it don’t go up, don’t buy it.”

Will Rogers (1879–1935) American humorist and entertainer

Daily Telegram #1019, Thoughts Of Will Rogers On The Late Slumps In Stocks (31 October 1929)
Daily telegrams

Bob Dylan photo

“Capitalism is above the law; it's said it don't count 'less it sells.”

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

Song lyrics, Infidels (1983), Union Sundown

Friedrich Engels photo

“The only difference as compared with the old, outspoken slavery is this, that the worker of today seems to be free because he is not sold once for all, but piecemeal by the day, the week, the year, and because no one owner sells him to another, but he is forced to sell himself in this way instead, being the slave of no particular person, but of the whole property-holding class.”

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

Der ganze Unterschied gegen die alte, offenherzige Sklaverei ist nur der, dass der heutige Arbeiter frei zu sein scheint, weil er nicht auf einmal verkauft wird, sondern stückweise, pro Tag, pro Woche, pro Jahr, und weil nicht ein Eigenthümer ihn dem andern verkauft, sondern er sich selbst auf diese Weise verkaufen muss, da er ja nicht der Sklave eines Einzelnen, sondern der ganzen besitzenden Klasse ist.
Source: (1845), pp. 114-115

Robert Silverberg photo
Marcus Tullius Cicero photo

“The evil was not in bread and circuses, per se, but in the willingness of the people to sell their rights as free men for full bellies and the excitement of the games which would serve to distract them from the other human hungers which bread and circuses can never appease.”

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

From Ben Moreell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Moreell, " Of Bread and Circuses http://fee.org/freeman/of-bread-and-circuses/", The Freeman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Freeman, January 1956, pp. 29–32 https://www.unz.org/Pub/Freeman-1956jan-00029. The quotation is from the left column of p. 31 in the original publication. Moreell's piece makes no mention of Cicero, but opens with a correct attribution of the phrase " Bread and circuses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses" to Juvenal.
Misattributed

John Kenneth Galbraith photo
Common (rapper) photo

“[Bin Laden has] already said publicly that you can have all the oil you want. I can‘t drink it. We‘re going to sell it to you at a marketplace.”

Michael Scheuer (1952) American counterterrorism analyst

Hardball with Chris Matthews, November 16 2004
2000s

Ernesto Che Guevara photo
Mata Amritanandamayi photo
Joseph Arch photo
Richard Cobden photo

“We are on the eve of great changes…We have set an example to the world in all ages; we have given them the representative system. The very rules and regulations of this House have been taken as the model for every representative assembly throughout the whole civilised world; and having besides given them the example of a free press and civil and religious freedom, and every institution that belongs to freedom and civilisation, we are now about giving a still greater example; we are going to set the example of making industry free—to set the example of giving the whole world every advantage of clime, and latitude, and situation, relying ourselves on the freedom of our industry. Yes, we are going to teach the world that other lesson. Don't think there is anything selfish in this, or anything at all discordant with Christian principles. I can prove that we advocate nothing but what is agreeable to the highest behests of Christianity. To buy in the cheapest market, and sell in the dearest. What is the meaning of the maxim? It means that you take the article which you have in the greatest abundance, and with it obtain from others that of which they have the most to spare; so giving to mankind the means of enjoying the fullest abundance of earth's goods, and in doing so, carrying out to the fullest extent the Christian doctrine of 'Doing to all men as ye would they should do unto you.”

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

Speech in the House of Commons (27 February 1846), quoted in John Bright and J. E. Thorold Rogers (eds.), Speeches on Questions of Public Policy by Richard Cobden, M.P. Volume I (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1908), p. 198.
1840s

Clay Shirky photo
Chuck Hagel photo

“If you wanted a safe job, go sell shoes. This is a tough business.”

Chuck Hagel (1946) United States Secretary of Defense

Asking his fellow Senators to support a joint resolution opposing President George W. Bush's troop deployment plan, Hagel Ponders White House Run As War Criticism Raises His Profile, The Washington Post, 26 January 2007, 2007-01-29 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/25/AR2007012502086_2.html,
2007

Warren Buffett photo
Mos Def photo

“Hip-Hop went from selling crack to smoking it”

Mos Def (1973) American rapper and actor

From "Hip-Hop"
Album Black On Both Sides

C. N. R. Rao photo
Friedrich Engels photo
Timothy Ferriss photo
Jeru the Damaja photo
Rod Serling photo

“Almost all medieval Muslim historians credit their heroes with desecration of Hindu idols and/or destruction of Hindu temples. The picture that emerges has the following components, depending upon whether the iconoclast was in a hurry on account of Hindu resistance or did his work at leisure after a decisive victory:
1. The idols were mutilated or smashed or burnt or melted down if they were made of precious metals.
2. Sculptures in relief on walls and pillars were disfigured or scraped away or torn down.
3. Idols of stone and inferior metals or their pieces were taken away, sometimes by cartloads, to be thrown down before the main mosque in (a) the metropolis of the ruling Muslim sultan and (b) the holy cities of Islam, particularly Mecca, Medina and Baghdad.
4. There were instances of idols being turned into lavatory seats or handed over to butchers to be used as weights while selling meat.
5. Brahmin priests and other holy men in and around the temple were molested or murdered.
6. Sacred vessels and scriptures used in worship were defiled and scattered or burnt.
7. Temples were damaged or despoiled or demolished or burnt down or converted into mosques with some structural alterations or entire mosques were raised on the same sites mostly with temple materials.
8. Cows were slaughtered on the temple sites so that Hindus could not use them again.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Hindu Temples – What Happened to Them, Volume I (1990)

John Maynard Keynes photo

“If farming were to be organised like the stock market, a farmer would sell his farm in the morning when it was raining, only to buy it back in the afternoon when the sun came out.”

John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946) British economist

Attributed by [Will, Hutton, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/nov/02/economics-economy-john-keynes, Will the real Keynes stand up, not this sad caricature?, Guardian, November 2, 2008, 2009-02-05]
Actual quote: "the Stock Exchange revalues many investments every day and the revaluations give a frequent opportunity to the individual (though not to the community as a whole) to revise his commitments. It is as though a farmer, having tapped his barometer after breakfast, could decide to remove his capital from the farming business between 10 and 11 in the morning and reconsider whether he should return to it later in the week."
The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1935), Ch. 12 http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/economics/keynes/general-theory/ch12.htm
Attributed

Sania Mirza photo

“Negativity sells. I have been labelled a rebel. If I had been one, would I have got married at 23? Would I have been a straight student?”

Sania Mirza (1986) Indian tennis player

Source: Sharmistha Chaudhuri Successful people are targeted; I’m more careful now: Sania Mirza http://www.hindustantimes.com/sports-news/tennis/successful-people-are-targeted-i-m-more-careful-now-sania-mirza/article1-1155050.aspx, The Hindustan Times, 23 November 2013

Klaus Kinski photo
Ezra Pound photo

“With usura hath no man a house of good stone
each block cut smooth and well fitting
[…]
with usura
hath no man a painted paradise on his church wall
[…]
no picture is made to endure nor to live with
but it is made to sell and sell quickly”

Canto XLV
Regarding usura, in 1972 Pound wrote in the foreword to "Selected Prose, 1909-1965":
<blockquote>"re USURY
I was out of focus, taking a symptom for a cause.
The cause is AVARICE."</blockquote>
The Cantos

Richard Holbrooke photo
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

Neil Young photo
Kage Baker photo
Herbert Marcuse photo
Philippe Starck photo
Elliott Smith photo

“There's some records that sell millions of copies, that it's really unclear if anybody liked it who was making it, y'know?”

Elliott Smith (1969–2003) American singer-songwriter

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_XNghTKvq8.

“I sell my time to get enough money to buy it back.”

James Richardson (1950) American poet

#151
Vectors: Aphorisms and Ten Second Essays (2001)

Richard Cobden photo

“I do not sell out my personality. I represent views. I utter opinions. Let us talk about that! That should be the topic, not my personality! It is only a frame. A framework. Which does not deserve either attention, adoration, or love.”

Róbert Puzsér (1974) hungarian publicist

Én nem a személyiségemet árulom. Én álláspontokat képviselek. Véleményt mondok. Erről beszéljünk! Ez legyen a téma, ne az én egyéniségem! Az egy váz. Egy keretrendszer. Nem érdemes sem figyelemre, sem rajongásra, sem szeretetre. (Puzsér Róbert: "Én egy őrkutya vagyok"
Szily Nóra interjúja, life.hu, 2012. április 10.)
Quotes from him, Interviews

Leo Tolstoy photo
Larry Flynt photo
William S. Burroughs photo
Clay Aiken photo
Octavia E. Butler photo
P.G. Wodehouse photo
Leonid Hurwicz photo
Ted Cruz photo

“We should not give $500 million to a corrupt organization that is selling unborn children's body parts.”

Ted Cruz (1970) American politician

#‎DefundPlannedParenthood‬: https://www.tedcruz.org/l/defund-planned-parenthood/ On Facebook September 28, 2015.
2010s

Muharrem İnce photo
Walter Dill Scott photo

“A wicked generation seeketh ever some new thing and the publishers must publish and the bookseller must book-sell in order to live.”

William Darling (politician) (1885–1962) Scottish politician

Source: The Bankrupt Bookseller (1947), p. 56

James Howell photo

“To whom thy secret thou dost tell, to him thy freedom thou dost sell.”

James Howell (1594–1666) Anglo-Welsh historian and writer

Lexicon Tetraglotton (1660)

Bernie Sanders photo

“Sanders: I have a D minus voting record, from the NRA. I lost an election probably, for congress here in Vermont back in 1988, because I believe we should not be selling or distributing assault weapons in this country. I am on record and have been for a very long time in saying we have got to significantly tighten up the background checks. We have to end the absurdity of the gun show loophole. 40 percent of the guns in this country are sold without any background checks. We have to deal with the straw man provision which allows people to legally buy guns and then distribute. We’ve got to take on the NRA. And that is my view. And I am, will do everything I can to—the tragedy that we saw in Parkland is unspeakable. And all over this country, parents are scared to death of what might happen when they send their kids to school. This problem is not going to be easily solved. Nobody has a magic solution, alright, but we’ve got to do everything we can do protect the children—
Todd: What does that mean? You say everything we can. Does that mean raising the age when you can purchase an AR-15? Does that mean limiting the purchase of AR-15s?
Sanders: Yes! Yeah, look. Chuck, what I just told you is that for 30 years, I believe that we should not be selling assault weapons in this country. These weapons are not for hunting, they are for killing human beings. These are military weapons. I do not know why we have five million of them running around the United States of America, so of course we have to do that. Of course we have to make it harder for people to purchase weapons. We have people now who are on terrorist watch lists who can purchase a weapon. Does this make any sense to anybody. Bottom line here, Republicans are going to have to say that it’s more important to protect the children of this country than to antagonize the NRA. Are they prepared to do that, I surely hope they are.”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

Interviewed by Chuck Todd of NBC News on Meet the Press on 18 February 2018 after the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting ([Meet the Press - 18 February 2018, 18 February 2018, 1 September 2018, https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/meet-press-february-18-2018-n849191, NBC News, Meet the Press]).
2010s, 2018

Robert A. Heinlein photo
Jacques Ellul photo
Camille Paglia photo
Warren Farrell photo
Daniel Hannan photo
Mickey Spillane photo
Rumi photo

“Love is the ark appointed for the righteous,
Which annuls the danger and provides a way of escape.
Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.
Cleverness is mere opinion, bewilderment intuition.”

Rumi (1207–1273) Iranian poet

The Masnavi, Book IV, Story II, as translated in Masnavi I Ma'navi : The Spiritual Couplets of Maulána Jalálu-'d-Dín Muhammad Rúmí (1898) by Edward Henry Whinfield
As quoted in The Perennial Philosophy (1945) by Aldous Huxley
Variant: Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.
Cleverness is mere opinion, bewilderment is intuition.

Ernest Mandel photo
Isaac Rosenberg photo
Steve Keen photo
William Ewart Gladstone photo

“They are not your friends, but they are your enemies in fact, though not in intention, who teach you to look to the Legislature for the radical removal of the evils that afflict human life…It is the individual mind and conscience, it is the individual character, on which mainly human happiness or misery depends. (Cheers.) The social problems that confront us are many and formidable. Let the Government labour to its utmost, let the Legislature labour days and nights in your service; but, after the very best has been attained and achieved, the question whether the English father is to be the father of a happy family and the centre of a united home is a question which must depend mainly upon himself. (Cheers.) And those who…promise to the dwellers in towns that every one of them shall have a house and garden in free air, with ample space; those who tell you that there shall be markets for selling at wholesale prices retail quantities—I won't say are imposters, because I have no doubt they are sincere; but I will say they are quacks (cheers); they are deluded and beguiled by a spurious philanthropy, and when they ought to give you substantial, even if they are humble and modest boons, they are endeavouring, perhaps without their own consciousness, to delude you with fanaticism, and offering to you a fruit which, when you attempt to taste it, will prove to be but ashes in your mouths.”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

Cheers.
Speech at Blackheath (28 October 1871), quoted in The Times (30 October 1871), p. 3.
1870s

Francis Marion Crawford photo
Edgar Rice Burroughs photo
Viktor Schauberger photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Frank Lloyd Wright photo
Albert Jay Nock photo
Courtney Love photo

“They put lipstick on the pig to try to sell it to somebody that didn't know what they were buying.”

Kyle Bass (1969) businessperson

CNBC House of Cards interview, 2009.

Bono photo

“Walk on, walk on
What you've got they can't deny it
Can't sell it, can't buy it
Walk on, walk on
Stay safe tonight.”

Bono (1960) Irish rock musician, singer of U2

Lyrics, All That You Can't Leave Behind (2000), Walk On

Steve Jobs photo

“Why would I ever want to run Disney? Wouldn't it make more sense just to sell them Pixar and retire?”

Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc.

As quoted in Fortune (23 February 2004)
2000s

Alfred P. Sloan photo
Kalle Lasn photo