Business

"Despatch is the soul of business."

"A rational, moral being cannot, without infinite wrong, be converted into a mere instrument of others’ gratification. He is necessarily an end, not a means. A mind, in which are sown the seeds of wisdom, disinterestedness, firmness of purpose, and piety, is worth more than all the outward material interests of a world. It exists for itself, for its own perfection, and must not be enslaved to its own or others’ animal wants."

"There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and ITT and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today. What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state — Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that perfect world in which there's no war or famine, oppression or brutality — one vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock, all necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused."

"It is not size that counts in business. Some companies with $500,000 capital net more profits than other companies with $5 million. Size is a handicap unless efficiency goes with it."

"The man of business knows that only by years of patient, unremitting attention to affairs can he earn his reward, which is the result, not of chance, but of well-devised means for the attainment of ends."

"Everybody knows by now, all businessmen are completely full of shit; just the worst kind of low-life, criminal, cocksuckers you could ever wanna' run into – a fuckin' piece of shit businessman. And the proof of it, the proof of it is, they don't even trust each other. They don't trust one another. When a business man sits down to negotiate a deal, the first thing he does is to automatically assume that the other guy is a complete lying prick who's trying to fuck him outta his money. So he's gotta do everything he can to fuck the other guy a little bit faster and a little bit harder. And he's gotta do it with a big smile on his face. You know that big, bullshit businessman smile? And if you're a customer – Whoah! – that's when you get the really big smile. Customer always gets that really big smile, as the businessman carefully positions himself directly behind the customer, and unzips his pants, and proceeds to service...the...account. 'I am servicing this account. This customer needs service.' Now you know what they mean. Now you know what they mean when they say, 'We specialize in customer service.' Whoever coined the phrase 'let the buyer beware' was probably bleeding from the asshole. That's business."

"Sometimes when I am alone in my beautiful apartments, brooding over these things and nursing my loneliness, I say to myself: "There are cases when success is a tragedy." There are moments when I regret my whole career, when my very success seems to be a mistake. I think that I was born for a life of intellectual interest. I was certainly brought up for one. The day when that accident turned my mind from college to business seems to be the most unfortunate day in my life. I think that I should be much happier as a scientist or writer, perhaps. I should then be in my natural element, and if I were doomed to loneliness I should have comforts to which I am now a stranger. That's the way I feel every time I pass the abandoned old building of the City College. The business world contains plenty of successful men who have no brains. Why, then, should I ascribe my triumph to special ability?"

"Business is a good game—lots of competition and a minimum of rules. You keep score with money."

"The rule of my life is to make business a pleasure and pleasure my business."

"Business dispatched is business well done, but business hurried is business ill done."

"What I must understand is why someone will continue to get out of bed in the morning once they have all the money they could want. Do they love the business, or do they love the money?"

"The messy slow path is actually faster."

"If you can run one business well, you can run any business well."

"Real success in business is to be found in achievements comparable rather with those of the artist or the scientist, of the inventor or statesman. And the joys sought in the profession of business must be like their joys and not the mere vulgar satisfaction which is experienced in the acquisition of money, in the exercise of power or in the frivolous pleasure of mere winning."

"In the field of modern business, so rich in opportunity for the exercise of man's finest and most varied mental faculties and moral qualities, mere money-making cannot be regarded as the legitimate end. Neither can mere growth of bulk or power be admitted as a worthy ambition. Nor can a man nobly mindful of his serious responsibilities to society view business as a game; since with the conduct of business human happiness or misery is inextricably interwoven."

"A business of high principle generates greater drive and effectiveness because people know that they can do the right thing decisively and with confidence."

"I believe that leaders and leadership teams working together in a proper design will run the business more effectively than by hierarchical, command-and-control managing. But I can't prove that. And there are no models."

"The performance of business leaders during the next decade will play a major role in determining not only business but political and social trends for a long time to come. Here are some of the principal reasons: - Business leaders control the economic well-being of and stockholder. - The course of business shapes public opinion. - Business leaders shape public opinion. So, in addition to his or her prime responsibility of managing his or her enterprise at a profit, the business leader of today is faced with new and larger responsibilities. And, at the same time, the job of managing his or her enterprise at a profit is increasing in complexity. Consequently, the imposition of additional responsibilities makes the nation’s task of developing an adequate number of properly equipped executive leaders a staggering one indeed."

"Loose ideas on the subject of business will not answer. It must be reduced to something of a science. It has its principles, upon a knowledge and an application of which, success in it mainly depends."

"Formerly when great fortunes were only made in war, war was a business; but now, when great fortunes are only made by business, business is war."

"Business has continued to be more interested in thinking, in general, than any other sector of society. The explanation for this is because there is a reality test. There is a bottom line. There are sales figures and profit figures. There are results."

"Let the business of the world take care of itself … My business is to get the world saved; if this involves the standing still of the looms and the shutting up of the factories, and the staying of the sailing of the ships, let them all stand still. When we have got everybody converted they can go on again, and we shall be able to keep things going then by working half time and have the rest to spend in loving one another and worshipping God."

"A man who is totally a business man is a stylite who never comes down from his column. He must have thoughts, feelings, eyes, ears, nose, taste, a sense of touch and a stomach only for Business. The business man knows neither father nor mother, neither uncle nor aunt, neither wife nor children, neither the beautiful nor the ugly, neither the clean nor the dirty, neither hot nor cold, neither God nor devil. He is wildly ignorant of letters, art, science, history, law. He must recognize and know only Business."

"Don't steal; thou'lt never thus compete Successfully in business. Cheat."

"Seest thou a man diligent in his business? He shall stand before kings; he shall not stand before mean men."

"General Systems Theory, as originally intended by Von Bertalanffy, is an ideal framework for the modeling of a business enterprise. Work, in its most civilized form should enrich, empower and emancipate. Thus we must continue to find ways to support work as a humanistic, not mechanistic endeavor. We must continue to seek out new models of business that support and enhance the individual as well as the collective whole. Given all this new technology, we need new institutions for handling it."

"The business changes. The technology changes. The team changes. The team members change. The problem isn't change, per se, because change is going to happen; the problem, rather, is the inability to cope with change when it comes."

"Where is Christ, the King? In heaven, to be sure. Thither it behooves you, soldier of Christ, to direct your course. Forget all earthly delights. A soldier does not build a house; he does not aspire to possession of lands; he does not concern himself with devious, coin-purveying trade. … The soldier enjoys a sustenance provided by the king; he need not furnish his own, nor vex himself in this regard."

"Many a man acquires a fortune by doing his business thoroughly, while his neighbour remains poor for life, because he only half does it. Ambition, energy, industry, perseverance, are indispensable requisites for success in business."

"However successful a man may be in his own business, if he turns from that and engages ill a business which he don't understand, he is like Samson when shorn of his locks his strength has departed, and he becomes like other men."

"Consequently, American businesses must meet the challenge of poorly- educated people in today's workforce by strengthening employee training programs."

"Come home to men's business and bosoms."

"In civil business: what first? boldness; what second and third? boldness. And yet boldness is a child of ignorance and baseness, far inferior to other parts."

"Business, you know, may bring money, but friendship hardly ever does."

"We were sinning by writing or reading or studying less than our assigned lessons. For I did not, O Lord, lack memory or capacity, for, by thy will, I possessed enough for my age. However, my mind was absorbed only in play, and I was punished for this by those who were doing the same things themselves. But the idling of our elders is called business; the idling of boys, though quite like it, is punished by those same elders, and no one pities either the boys or the men. For will any common sense observer agree that I was rightly punished as a boy for playing ball—just because this hindered me from learning more quickly those lessons by means of which, as a man, I could play at more shameful games?"

"The people who believe most that our greatness and welfare are proved by our being very rich, and who most give their lives and thoughts to becoming rich, are just the very people whom we call the Philistines. Culture says: “Consider these people, then, their way of life, their habits, their manners, the very tones of their voice; look at them attentively; observe the literature they read, the things which give them pleasure, the words which come forth out of their mouths, the thoughts which make the furniture of their minds; would any amount of wealth be worth having with the condition that one was to become just like these people by having it?”"

"Business tomorrow."

"When a business is bought, it is bought for its potential—for its future, not its past."

"A mission statement should define the business that the organization wants to be in, not necessarily what it is in."

"Unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance; but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath."

"Lord of himselfe, though not of lands, And having nothing, yet hath all."

"People may have too much of a good thing: Full as an egg of wisdom thus I sing."

"Germany must have her place in the sun."

"A power which has dotted over the surface of the whole globe with her possessions and military posts, whose morning drum-beat, following the sun, and keeping company with the hours, circles the earth with one continuous and unbroken strain of the martial airs of England."

"Others may use the ocean as their road; Only the English make it their abode."

"Possession, they say, is eleven points of the law."

"Why should the brave Spanish soldiers brag? The sunne never sets in the Spanish dominions, but ever shineth on one part or other we have conquered for our king."

"The sun never sets on the immense empire of Charles V."

"The king of Spain is a great potentate, who stands with one foot in the east and the other in the west; and the sun never sets that it does not shine on some of his dominions."

"Ich heisse Der reichste Mann in der getauften Welt; Die Sonne geht in meinem Staat nicht unter."