Businesspeople From The United States

"In fact, as a general thing, money-getters are the benefactors of our race."

"The best kind of charity is to help those who are willing to help themselves."

"Politeness and civility are the best capital ever invested in business."

"The plan of "counting the chickens before they are hatched" is an error of ancient date, but it does not seem to improve by age."

"Money is in some respects like fire; it is a very excellent servant but a terrible master."

"But however mysterious is nature, however ignorant the doctor, however imperfect the present state of physical science, the patronage and the success of quacks and quackeries are infinitely more wonderful than those of honest and laborious men of science and their careful experiments."

"Need I explain to my own beloved countrymen that there is humbug in politics? Does anybody go into a political campaign without it? are no exaggerations of our candidate’s merits to be allowed? no depreciations of the other candidate? Shall we no longer prove that the success of the party opposed to us will overwhelm the land in ruin? Let me see. Leaving out the two elections of General Washington, eighteen times that very fact has been proved by the party that was beaten, and immediately we have not been ruined, notwithstanding that the dreadful fatal fellows on the other side got their hands on the offices and their fingers into the treasury."

"A little reflection will show that humbug is an astonishingly wide-spread phenomenon — in fact almost universal. And this is true, although we exclude crimes and arrant swindles from the definition of it, according to the somewhat careful explanation which is given in the beginning of the chapter succeeding this one."

"If we could have a full exposure of "the tricks of trade" of all sorts, of humbugs and deceivers of past times, religious, political, financial, scientific, quackish and so forth, we might perhaps look for a somewhat wiser generation to follow us. I shall be well satisfied if I can do something towards so good a purpose."

"Certainly,, in the light of the great American spirit of liberty and equal rights which is sweeping over this country, and making the thrones of tyrants totter in the Old World, no party can afford to carry slavery, either of body or of mind. Knock off your manacles and let the man go free. Take down the blinds from his intellect, and let in the light of education and Christian culture. When this is done you have developed a man. Give him the responsibility of a man and the self-respect of a man, by granting him the right of suffrage, Let universal education, and the universal franchise be the motto of free America, and the toiling millions of Europe, who are watching you with such intense interest, will hail us as their saviours. Let us loyally sink "party" on this question, and go for "God and our Country." Let no man attach an eternal stigma to his name by shutting his eyes to the great lesson of the hour, and voting against permitting the people to express their opinion on this important subject. Let us unanimously grant this truly democratic boon. Then, when our laws of franchise are settled on a just basis, let future parties divide where they honestly differ on State or national questions which do nor trench upon the claims of manhood or American citizenship."

"I care nothing whatever for any sect or party under heaven, as such. I have no axes to grind, no logs to roll, no favors to ask. All I desire is to do what is right, and prevent what is wrong. I believe in no "expediency" that is not predicated of justice, for in all things — politics, as well as everything else — I know that "honesty is the best policy." A retributive Providence will unerringly and speedily search out all wrong-doing; hence, right is always the best in the long run."

"I am no politician; I came to this legislature simply because I wish to have the honor of voting for the two constitutional amendments — one for driving slavery entirely out of our country; the other to allow men of education and good moral character to vote, regardless of the color of their skins. To give my voice for these two philanthropic, just and Christian measures is all the glory I ask legislativewise."

"When, a few days since, this honorable body voted unanimously for the Amendment of the United States Constitution abolishing human slavery, I not only thanked God from my heart of hearts, but I felt like going down on my knees to the gentlemen of the opposition for the wisdom they had exhibited in bowing to the logic of events by dropping that dead weight of slavery which had disrupted the Democratic party, with which I had been so long connected. And on this occasion I wish again to appeal to the wisdom and loyalty of my Democratic friends. I say Democratic "friends," for I am and ever was a thorough, out and out Democrat until he proved the contrary, as I conceived, in the Kansas question. My democracy goes for the greatest good to the greatest number, for equal and exact justice to all men, and for a submission to the will of the majority. If I thought I had one drop of blood in my veins which was not democratic, in the light of this definition, I would have it out, no matter at what trouble or sacrifice. It was the repudiation by the southern democracy of this great democratic doctrine of majority rule which opened the rebellion."

"I am a showman by profession...and all the gilding shall make nothing else of me."

"[P]eople are still asking me if I knew Star Wars was going to be that big of a hit. Yes, of course I knew. We all knew. The only one who didn’t know was George Lucas. We kept it from him, because we wanted to see what his face looked like when it changed expression—and he fooled us even then. He got Industrial Light and Magic to change his facial expression for him[,] and THX sound to make the noise of a face-changing expression. Not only was he virtually expressionless in those days, but he also hardly talked at all. His only two directions to the three of us in the first film were "faster" and "more intense.""

"In the world we live in - and the system we've created for ourselves, in terms of it's a big industry - you cannot lose money. So the point is that you're forced to make a particular kind of movie. And I used to say this all the time, with people, you know, back when Russia was the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and they'd say: "Oh, but aren’t you so glad that you're in America?" And I'd say: "Well, I know a lot of Russian filmmakers and they have a lot more freedom than I have. All they have to do is be careful about criticizing the government. Otherwise, they can do anything they want"."

"Pleasure's fun. It's great, but you can't keep it going forever; just accept the fact that it's here and it's gone, and maybe then again, it will come back, and you'll get to do it again. Joy lasts forever. Pleasure is purely self-centered. It's all about your pleasure: it's about you. It's a selfish, self-centered emotion, that is created by a self-centered motive of greed. Joy is compassion. Joy is giving yourself to somebody else, or something else. And it's a kind of thing that is, in its subtlety and lowness, much more powerful than pleasure. You get hung up on pleasure; you're doomed. If you pursue joy; you will find everlasting happiness."

"It's Star Wars starring an eleven-year-old girl"

"Anakin Skywalker has a Padawan. Anakin has a Padawan."

"No, I like my own characters. I want to get Anakin and Obi-Wan in. I want to give Anakin a padawan Let's take that girl there."

"The fans are all upset. They’re always going to be upset. Why did he do it like this? And why didn’t he do it like this? They write their own movie, and then, if you don’t do their movie, they get upset about it."

"Being in Washington is more fictional than being in Hollywood."

"The truth is, the only thing I was inspired by was the fact that it's told from the point of view of two peasants, who get mixed up with a samurai and princess and a lot of very high-level people."

"One of the amazing things about 'Seven Samurai' is that there are a lot of characters. And considering you have so many, and they all have shaved heads, and you've got good guys and bad guys and peasants, you get to understand a lot of them without too much being said."

"As you go through history, I didn't think it was going to get quite this close. So it's just one of those recurring things… I hope this doesn't come true in our country. Maybe the film will wake people to the situation. … When I wrote it [Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith], Iraq didn't exist… We were just funding Saddam Hussein and giving him weapons of mass destruction. We didn't think of him as an enemy at that time. We were going after Iran and using him as our surrogate, just as we were doing in Vietnam… The parallels between what we did in Vietnam and what we're doing in Iraq now are unbelievable… [In ancient Rome,] why did the senate after killing Caesar turn around and give the government to his nephew? Why did France after they got rid of the king and that whole system turn around and give it to Napoleon? It's the same thing with Germany and Hitler. … You sort of see these recurring themes where a democracy turns itself into a dictatorship, and it always seems to happen kind of in the same way, with the same kinds of issues, and threats from the outside, needing more control. A democratic body, a senate, not being able to function properly because everybody's squabbling, there's corruption."

"There is no Episode VII...Not about Luke Skywalker, not about, you know, that group of people and that struggle to bring democracy back to the galaxy."

"Everybody has the choice of being a hero or not being a hero every day of their lives … and you can either help somebody, you can be compassionate toward people, you can treat some people with dignity — or not. And … one way you become a hero, and the other way … you’re part of the problem. And … it’s not a grand thing, you know; you don’t have to get into a giant laser-sword fight and blow up three spaceships to become a hero. I mean — it’s a very small thing that happens every day of your life."

"Sound is half the experience of seeing a film. That's why I have been bothered by the poor sound re-production in many theaters and most homes."

"People who alter or destroy works of art and our cultural heritage for profit or as an exercise of power are barbarians, and if the laws of the United States continue to condone this behavior, history will surely classify us as a barbaric society. The preservation of our cultural heritage may not seem to be as politically sensitive an issue as "when life begins" or "when it should be appropriately terminated," but it is important because it goes to the heart of what sets mankind apart. Creative expression is at the core of our humanness. Art is a distinctly human endeavor. We must have respect for it if we are to have any respect for the human race."

"Don't avoid the cliches — they are cliches because they work!"

"One of the fatal mistakes that almost every science-fiction film makes is that they spend so much time on the settings — you know, creating the environment — that they spend film time on it. And you don't have to spend too much film time to create an environment. What they're doing is showing off the amount of work that they generated, and it slows the pace of the film down. And the story is not the settings. The story is the stories, plot. You're always surprised with characters, I mean in film it's even more dramatic than it is in writing, because eventually you actually take a real person and stick them into that character. And that real person brings with him, or her, an enormous package of reality. I mean, Threepio is just a hunk of plastic, and without Tony Daniels in there it just isn't anything at all. In the first film we had maybe 20 colors to paint with, and this time we've had 40 colors to paint with. Well, that doesn't mean it's going to be a better painting. Visual effects are just a tool, a means of telling a story. People tend to confuse them as an end to themselves. A visual effect without a story is a pretty boring thing."

"We say, 'We think you are a talented, functioning person, and we are hiring you because of your abilities, and whatever you come up with, we're going to take.' If we make a mistake, it will be in picking the wrong person. What we're striving for is total freedom, where we can finance our pictures, make them our way, release them where we want them released and be completely free to express ourselves. That's very hard to do in the world of business. In this country, the only thing that speaks is money and you have to have the money to have the power to be free. So the danger is — in being as oppressive as the next guy to the people below you. We're going to do everything possible to avoid that pitfall. But if we fail, it's another saga in the history of man..."

"The Johnson film wasn't terrible. I just didn't agree with the politics. I'm not a fan of big government and propaganda films are distasteful."

"It was insane, I wish I had filmed it. It was like bringing an audience to the Mona Lisa and asking, 'Do you know why she is smiling?' 'Sorry Leonardo, you'll have to make some changes.' At least the audience understood that THX was not a love story set in the 25th-century, which was the way Warners had planned to advertise it. Instead, the company settled for 'Visit the future, where love is the ultimate crime.'"

"He could have known this little girl when she was just a kid. Had an affair with her when she was eleven. … He hasn’t seen her in twelve years. Now she’s twenty-two. It’s a really strange relationship. …This is a resource that you can either mine or not. It's not as blatant as we're talking about. You don't think about it that much. You don't immediately realize how old she was at the time. It would be subtle. She could talk about it. "I was jail bait the last time we were together." She can flaunt it at him, but at the same time she never says, "I was fifteen years old." Even if we don't mention it, when we go to cast the part we're going to end up with a woman who's about twenty-three and a hero who's about thirty- five."

"My primary concept in approaching the production of THX 1138 was to make a kind of theater verité film of the future — something that would look like a documentary crew had made a film about some character in a time yet to come. No film ever ends up exactly as you would like it to, but with minor exceptions, THX came out pretty much as I had visualized it, thanks to some excellent assistance — and a whole lot of luck."

"During his years at the helm, McNealy grew Sun from a Silicon Valley start-up to a leading provider of network computing infrastructure with thousands of employees worldwide."

"Open source is free like a puppy is free."

"[Tech] is unstoppable. We're getting more tech in our lives every day as we go to VR or AR and all of the machine learning and artificial intelligence and all the rest of it."

"I am very liberal on social issues, but I don’t believe we can have personal liberty, which is what that means, without having economic liberty. We have economic tyranny when you add in Obamacare, we have about 50 percent of the U.S. GDP in the public sector. That means that you have a tyrannical and overregulating, and politicized economy, not a market economy, not the invisible hand."

"In a world without fences, who needs Gates?"

"What we offer is good enough. It's like my haircut: It ain't pretty, but it's good enough."

"You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it."

"[...] the only thing I'd rather own than [[w:Microsoft Windows|[Microsoft] Windows]] is English or Chinese or Spanish, because then I could charge a $249 right to speak English. And I could charge you an upgrade fee when I add new letters like N and T."

"Ballmer and Butt-Head"

"Google’s not a real company. It's a house of cards."

"Fucking Eric Schmidt is a fucking pussy. I'm going to fucking bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to fucking kill Google."

"My dad said, "What the heck is software?" and my mom said, "Why would a person ever need a computer?" They said, "OK, OK, we hear you, but if it doesn't work out, you'll go back to business school right?" And I said "Right," and I never came back."

"Is there fake news on Facebook? Of course there is. I could go right now on Facebook and say there’s an earthquake, Richter scale 7, in Washington, D.C. And should I be allowed to do that or should that be something that somehow Facebook has a way to control? I don’t know. I get how Facebook could control advertising. I don’t get how they’re a value proposition, which people – the world does like. I don’t understand how it works at all if you have no freedom of speech, even if you are saying things that are patently false."

"I think fully accepting that things are not the way they need to be, and going to work on those issues in a way that people understand you are serious about, as opposed to the tech industry generally appearing arrogant, I understand that."