Business

"When by habit a man cometh to have a bargaining soul, its wings are cut, so that it can never soar. It bindeth reason an apprentice to gain, and instead of a director, maketh it a drudge."

"For the words of the profits were written on the studio wall"

"Such is the fate of everyone who goes in search of profit; it takes away the life of its owners."

"When a firm makes a profit this means that productive factors have been properly employed and corresponding human needs have been duly satisfied."

"The love of gain, which is a large, incalculably large, element in every soul, when once applied to the desire for God, will bless the man who has it."

"It is no longer economy aiming at individual profit, but economy concerned with collective interest."

"I don't think that corporations are these big bogeymen that a lot of people paint them to be. … A corporation is a group of people, and if you want to come together for profit or nonprofit, that's your business—whatever you want to do."

"For the corporation executives, the military metaphysic … often coincides with their interest in a stable and planned flow of profit; it enables them to have their risk underwritten by public money; it enables them reasonably to expect that they can exploit for private profit now and later, the risky research developments paid for by public money. It is, in brief, a mask of the subsidized capitalism from which they extract profit and upon which their power is based."

"I'm convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, militarism and economic exploitation are incapable of being conquered."

"For what shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, but suffer the loss of his soul?"

"Reflective apologists for war at the present day all take it religiously. It is a sort of sacrament. It's profits are to the vanquished as well as to the victor; and quite apart from any question of profit, it is an absolute good, we are told, for it is human nature at its highest dynamic."

"The thing we must do intensely is be human together. People are more important than things. We must get together. The best thing humans can have going for them is each other. We have each other. We must reject everything which humiliates us. Humans are not objects of consumption. We must develop an absolute priority of humans ahead of profit — any humans ahead of any profit. Then we will survive. … Together."

"What the English call “comfortable” is something endless and inexhaustible. Every condition of comfort reveals in turn its discomfort, and these discoveries go on for ever. Hence the new want is not so much a want of those who have it directly, but is created by those who hope to make profit from it."

"He is like all the rest: a slave to profit, a master only to his bent for negotiating the best deal."

"… actions whose motives he cannot understand—that is, actions not prompted by the hope of profit."

"We may add that focus on maximizing profits is also "not always consistent" with the hope for "the survival of humanity," to borrow the phrase of a leaked memo from , [the U.S.’s] largest bank, warning that "the survival of humanity" is at risk on our current course, including the bank's own investments in fossil fuels. Thus, canceled a profitable sustainable energy project because there’s more profit to be made in destroying life on Earth. ExxonMobil refrained from doing so, because [it] had never opened such a project in the first place, having made more rational calculations of profitability. And rightly so, according to neoliberal doctrine. As Milton Friedman and other neoliberal luminaries have instructed us, the task of corporate managers is to maximize profits. Any deviation from this moral obligation would shatter the foundations of "civilized life.""

"Market signals were clear: There’s no profit in preventing a future catastrophe."

"The infinite, absolute character of Virtue has passed into a finite, conditional one; it is no longer a worship of the Beautiful and Good; but a calculation of the Profitable."

"There are some sordid minds, formed of slime and filth, to whom interest and gain are what glory and virtue are to superior souls; they feel no other pleasure but to acquire money."

"O proud philanthropist, your hope is vain"

"If vices were profitable, the virtuous man would be the sinner."

"Capitalist-private property relations are the source of class inequalities, which is the primary factor in my being a member of a class that bears all the burdens of society without enjoying its advantages. Under the influence of illegitimate-capitalist values, I was pursuing the alleviation of social-economic hardship through individual advancement. This is a wholly inadequate remedy to social problems because it doesn’t challenge the fundamental injustice of class-exploitation and class-oppression, which are responsible for creating the socio-economic ills in the first place. Unaware of my class interest, I was perpetuating my own oppression by engaging in competitive capitalist practices that ensure the smooth functioning of the system as the exploiting minority profits in more ways than one off the division and disunity engendered by competition, so prevalent amongst the exploited. Look around: competition, euphemistically called “individuality,” permeates and is systematically promoted to the masses of people while the corporate conglomerations and Fortune 500 are busy “merging and monopolizing.”"

"It is better to buy than compete."

"Most lobbying is pro-business, in the sense that it promotes the interests of existing businesses, not pro-market in the sense of fostering truly free and open competition."

"Now all the truth is out, Be secret and take defeat From any brazen throat, For how can you compete, Being honor bred, with one Who, were it proved he lies, Were neither shamed in his own Nor in his neighbors’ eyes? Bred to a harder thing Than Triumph, turn away And like a laughing string Whereon mad fingers play Amid a place of stone, Be secret and exult, Because of all things known That is most difficult."

"There can be only one."

"Oliver E. Williamson has argued that markets and hierarchical organizations, such as firms, represent alternative governance structures which differ in their approaches to resolving conflicts of interest. The drawback of markets is that they often entail haggling and disagreement. The drawback of firms is that authority, which mitigates contention, can be abused. Competitive markets work relatively well because buyers and sellers can turn to other trading partners in case of dissent. But when market competition is limited, firms are better suited for conflict resolution than markets. A key prediction of Williamson's theory, which has also been supported empirically, is therefore that the propensity of economic agents to conduct their transactions inside the boundaries of a firm increases along with the relationship-specific features of their assets."

"Our species will not survive another 100 years if we don’t move from a competitive to a cooperative mode of existence. “Me first” is an obsolete, unsustainable perspective."

"The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win you’re still a rat."

"I have an idée fixe that I am completely obsessed with on the business side — which is that if you are starting a company, if you are the founder entrepreneur starting a company, you always want to aim for monopoly. ... And you want to always avoid competition. ... Hence competition is for losers. ... What makes a business valuable? ... A business creates X dollars of value and captures Y% of X. X and Y are independent variables."

"You have a real life if and only if you do not compete with anyone in any of your pursuits."

"Ave, Imperator, morituri te salutant."

"Zero sum game implies winners and losers. If somebody wins, somebody gotta lose…. I don’t agree with that. Because all boats can rise on a rising sea. Good films help other good films. Different psychology. If you’re overly competitive, you say it is exclusionary, a zero sum game: I must win so he must lose. That’s not true. We can all win without forcing the other guy to lose."

"In economic life competition is never completely lacking, but hardly ever is it perfect."

"A person whose mind is distracted lives between the fangs of mental afflictions. ... They feel envy toward a superior, competitiveness with a peer, arrogance toward one who is inferior, conceit due to praise and anger due to reproach. When could there be any benefit from a fool?"

"A man with no friends, only live for revenge Live his life off the henge, cut, through a thousand men Blade swing with the force of a cyclone Cut crystal and bone, pistol and chrome Stand in my path, you're a dead man I cut the whole world in half for the Number One headband Quest of a lonely soul, on a lonely road."

"Competition has been shown to be useful up to a certain point and no further, but cooperation, which is the thing we must strive for today, begins where competition leaves off."

"To my knowledge significant progress has never been born of competition. … In science, being 'better' than others is of little practical value. Examples of how absurd the idea of scientific competition is are abundant."

"You must not envy each other. But of course it depends on each of you to develop your capabilities. And the only lawful competition between members of the group may be a competition in the best direction of striving and understanding of the thought for the General Good. Each one should understand that this capacity in each individual consciousness is the only indicator of progress and that the spirit stands on a corresponding step-not higher and not lower."

"Success is whatever humiliation everyone has agreed to compete for."

"The truth is that economic competition is the very opposite of competition in the animal kingdom. It is not a competition in the grabbing off of scarce nature-given supplies, as it is in the animal kingdom. Rather, it is a competition in the positive creation of new and additional wealth."

"Whoever claims that economic competition represents "survival of the fittest" in the sense of the law of the jungle, provides the clearest possible evidence of his lack of knowledge of economics."

"Competition is a by-product of productive work, not its goal. A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others."

"The production of security should, in the interests of the consumers of this intangible commodity, remain subject to the law of free competition. ... No government should have the right to prevent another government from going into competition with it, or to require consumers of security to come exclusively to it for this commodity."

"Nobody talks more of free enterprise and competition and of the best man winning than the man who inherited his father's store or farm."

"Real learning comes about when the competitive spirit has ceased. The competitive spirit is merely an additive process which is not learning at all. We want the child to learn and not merely add knowledge to himself like a machine. To help the child to learn basically and fundamentally he must cease to compete, with all its implications... Competitiveness is destructive not only in the classroom but right through life."

"In business, the competition will bite you if you keep running; if you stand still, they will swallow you."

"The only way to beat the competition is to stop trying to beat the competition."

"Live daringly, boldly, fearlessly. Taste the relish to be found in competition — in having to put forth the best within you to match the deeds of risk-taking, hard-working competitors."

"Free competition is worth more to society than it costs."