Businesspeople From The United States

"I need reinforcements, I need troops, man. I need 500 buses. Get every dog-gone Greyhound bus line in the country and get their asses moving to New Orleans … This is a major, major, major deal. I can't emphasize that enough.""

"There's way too many frickin' -- excuse me -- cooks in the kitchen."

"I knew I'd never be more than a second-rate business man and a second-rate writer — so I decided to add the two things together and be a first rate advertising man."

"Bruce Barton's advertising career started quite accidentally. One of Collier's clients, the Harvard Classics "Dr. Elliot's Five-Foot Shelf of Books," had traditionally been sold on double page spreads. At the last minute, the pressroom man told Barton that he had an extra quarter page left to fill. Barton tore a page out of one of the classics, and asked his readers, "This is Marie Antoinette riding to her death. Have you ever read her tragic story?" Barton had created a unique benefit for his readers — cultural enrichment in less than fifteen minutes a day — and this simple idea sold over 400,000 sets of the classics."

"He was in fact an adman: persuading, recruiting followers, finding the right words to arouse interest and create desires, in short exemplifying all the principles of modern salesmanship."

"Learn their lesson, that if you would teach people you first must capture their interest with news; that your service rather than your sermons must be your claim upon their attention; that what you say must be simple, and brief, and above all sincere — the unmistakable voice of true regard and affection."

"Generalities would have been soon forgotten. But the story that had its roots in everyday human existence and need, lives and will live forever. It condensed the philosophy of Christianity into half a dozen unforgettable paragraphs. The parable of the Good Samaritan is the greatest advertisement of all times."

"Much brass has been sounded and many cymbals tinkled in the name of advertising; but the advertisements which persuade people to act are written by men who have an abiding respect for the intelligence of their readers, and a deep sincerity regarding the merits of the goods they have to sell."

"Surely no one will consider us lacking in reverence if we say that every one of the "principles of modern salesmanship" on which business men so much pride themselves, are brilliantly exemplified in Jesus' talk and work."

"It is said that great leaders are born, not made. The saying is true to this degree, that no man can persuade people to do what he wants them to do, unless he genuinely likes people, and believes that what he wants them to do is to their own advantage."

"To every man of vision the clear Voice speaks; there is no great leadership where there is not a mystic. Nothing splendid has ever been achieved except by those who dared believe that something inside themselves was superior to circumstance. To choose the sure thing is treason to the soul."

"What a curious phenomenon it is, that you can get men to die for the liberty of the world, who will not make the little sacrifice that is needed to free themselves from their own individual bondage."

"Sometimes when I consider what tremendous consequences come from little things . . . I am tempted to think . . . there are no little things."

"The American conception of advertising is to arouse desires and stimulate wants, to make people dissatisfied with the old and out-of-date and by constant iteration to send them out to work harder to get the latest model—whether that model be an icebox or a rug or a new home."

"I had never thought of advertising as a life work, though I had on the side, written some very successful copy."

"Give advertising time. That is the thing that it needs most. The advertising agency is the most precious infant among the professions. Is it fair to expect perfection in a profession that counts only a single generation to its credit? We are learning. I see no reason why advertising agencies, too, should not outlive their founders and the successors of their founders, growing wiser with each generation and gathering a priceless possession of recorded experience."

"There are two seas in Palestine. One is fresh, and fish are in it. Splashes of green adorn its banks. Trees spread their branches over it and stretch out their thirsty roots to sip of its healing waters... The Sea of Galilee receives but does not keep the Jordan. For every drop that flows into it another drop flows out. The giving and receiving go on in equal measure. The other sea is shrewder, hoarding its income jealously. It will not be tempted into any generous impulse. Every drop it gets, it keeps. The Sea of Galilee gives and lives. The other sea gives nothing. It is named The Dead. There are two kinds of people in the world. There are two seas in Palestine."

"A man may be down, but he is never out."

"That man was so much larger than life that there's no scale by which to measure him. Most of Wilson's dialogue, if put down on paper, seems either vulgar or obscene."

"America's most fascinating outlaw."

"Florida was invented for Addison Mizner's little brother."

"You can't be a rascal for 40 years and then cop a plea the last minute. God keeps better books than that."

"I want a priest, a rabbi and a Protestant minister. I want to hedge my bets."

"Tell 'em to count to ten over him and he'll get up."

"Stop dying. Am trying to write a comedy."

"The amount of sleep required by the average person is five minutes more."

"It's getting so people no longer count the silverware when I come to dinner."

"...a trip through a sewer in a glass-bottom boat."

"To my embarrassment I was born in bed with a lady."

"Harry Thaw shot the wrong architect."

"A fellow who is always declaring he's no fool usually has his suspicions."

"Be nice to people on the way up because you'll meet them on the way down."

"A good listener is not only popular everywhere, but after a while he gets to know something."

"Faith is a wonderful thing, but doubt gets you an education."

"Treat a whore like a lady and a lady like a whore."

"When you steal from one author, it's plagiarism; if you steal from many, it's research."

"Life's a tough proposition, and the first hundred years are the hardest."

"To a mutual friend who had told him the articles should be answered Mr. Rockefeller was said to have replied: "Not a word. Not a word about that misguided woman." To another who asked him about my charges he was reported as answering: "All without foundation.""

"My two hours' study of Mr. Rockefeller aroused a feeling I had not expected, which time has intensified. I was sorry for him. I know no companion so terrible as fear. Mr. Rockefeller, for all the conscious power written in face and voice and figure, was afraid, I told myself, afraid of his own kind. My friend Lewis Emery, Jr., priding himself on being a victim, was free and happy. Not gold enough in the world to tempt him to exchange his love of defiance for a power which carried with it a head as uneasy as that on Mr. Rockefeller's shoulders."

"When he rose to speak, the impression of power that the first look at him had given increased, and the impression of age passed. I expected a quavering voice, but the voice was not even old, if a little fatigued, a little thin. It was clear and utterly sincere. He meant what he was saying. He was on his own ground talking about dividends, dividends of righteousness. "If you would take something out," he said, clenching the hand of his outstretched right arm, "you must put something in"-emphasizing "put something in" with a long outstretched forefinger."

"Each generation repeats its leaders. Each sees men endowed with superior inventiveness, energy, and genius for business, inspired by love of power and possession, launch selfish schemes – Carnegies, Rockefellers, Goulds... Each generation has had its Henry George, its Bellamy, its Bryan, intent on persuading mankind that he had found the way, could lead men to the good life. In each generation employer and employee have faced the decision-war or cooperation."

"What J.P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller were to the Age of Robber Barons, Microsoft's Bill Gates and Berkshire Hathaway's Warren Buffett, as well as digital moguls like Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos are to the contemporary age of the rule of the 1%. Then as now, the super-rich used governments to write laws and rules to allow them to accumulate unlimited wealth; then as now, creating monopolies by enclosing the commons and killing competition is the strategy for becoming the 1%."

"It is a common myth within capitalist thought that the individual through drive and hard work can become a capitalist. In the U.S.A., it is usual to refer to an individual like John D. Rockefeller, Sr., as someone who rose "from rags to riches." To complete the moral of the Rockefeller success story, it would be necessary to fill in the details on all the millions of people who had to be exploited in order for one man to become a multimillionaire. The acquisition of wealth is not due to hard work alone, or the Africans working as slaves in America and the West Indies would have been the wealthiest group in the world. The individualism of the capitalist must be seen against the hard and unrewarded work of the masses."

"My mother and father raised but one question: Is it right, is it duty?"

"I took responsibility early and, like my parents, I was serious."

"Of course John D. Rockefeller does not realize the fact, but it is true nevertheless that the Hookworm Commission he is supporting in the South is doing more for the revolutionary awakening in Dixie than anything else."

"I despise the rule of Rockefeller and Morgan as much as that of King or Kaiser, and am as outraged by Ludlow and Calumet as by Belgium."

"Even the Rockefeller family, which made its vast fortune on oil, has begun divesting from fossil fuel companies. Stephen Heintz, an heir of Standard Oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller, said, "We are quite convinced that if he were alive today, as an astute businessman looking out to the future, he would be moving out of fossil fuels and investing in clean, renewable energy.""

"If you could get along without King George, you can get along without King John Rockefeller. Political liberty without economic freedom is a myth. Political liberty is rooted in economic freedom. The man who controls and owns the means that sustain my life, owns and controls me."

"Competition was natural enough at one time, but do you think you are competing today? Many of you think you are. Against whom? Against Rockefeller? About as I would if I had a wheelbarrow and competed with the Santa Fe from here to Kansas City."