Businesspeople From Scotland

"To be honest, being CEO and having that level of involvement in everything going on in the club – being in the thick of things – was what I loved, but the moment was right to step back from that."

"My mother had a lot to do with bringing up my daughter. I knew that when I left her with my mother she was safe and then I could get on with my career."

"To continue in psychology, I would have had to do educational psychology and you had to teach for a couple of years. The last thing I wanted to do was teach."

"My biggest horror is waking up in the morning and finding that I didn't have anything to do."

"What they were looking for was input and advice from me with my business background to strengthen where they were with their plans. It was absolutely clear to me that their hearts were in the right place. What was required was more of a business perspective."

"I've sat on the SPFL board and I've approved a loan for another club. I know that loans can be approved."

"I wanted to demonstrate to my father I was still a good working class girl who would get married and have kids like everyone else. I soon realised it wasn't a very clever thing to have done."

"I am just not cut out to run a public company and be answerable to hundreds of faceless shareholders."

"I know the passion, I know how much football means but so much of what you see and hear is illogical. The team is having a bad run; it happens to more or less everybody. I just think it’s unpleasant and feel for those in the firing line because if only life was that simple. You can deal with it for so long then it begins to wear you down."

"“I always said that I wouldn’t lose a fortune on a football club.”"

"If something is wrong, it is wrong and we should all be doing our utmost to correct that wrong."

"My father was from a strong working class background and came from an age where it was believed education was wasted on women. He used to say things like: 'If she was a boy I could understand it'."

"My parents always strove to try to ensure their children would have more than they had. That is really what made them tick."

"I’ve been criticised for spending money we didn’t have."

"If in that land you do give the people knowledge without religion, rest assured that it is the greatest blunder, politically speaking, that ever was committed."

"Alexander Duff was convinced that “of all the systems of false religion ever fabricated by the perverse ingenuity of fallen men, Hinduism is surely the most stupendous” and that India was “the chief seat of Satan’s earthly dominion.”"

"While you engage in directly separating as many precious atoms from the mass as the stubborn resistance to ordinary appliances can admit, we shall, with the blessing of God, devote our time and strength for the preparing of a mine, and the setting of a train which shall one day explode and tear up the whole from its lowest depths."

"In 1840, the Reverend Alexander Duff briefly referred to the Aryan commonality by stating that the Hindus "can point to little that indicates their high original." But for the most part he also simply ranted that they "have no will, no liberty, no conscience of their own. They are passive instruments, moulded into shape by external influences—mere machines, blindly stimulated, at the bidding of another, to pursuits the most unworthy of immortal crea tures. In them, reason is in fact laid prostrate. They launch into all the depravities of idol worship. They look like the sports and derision of the Prince of darkness" (107)."

"It cannot be too well understood that our position in India has never been in any degree that of civilians bringing civilization to savage races. When we landed in India we found there a hoary civilization, which, during the progress of thousands of years, had fitted itself into the character and adjusted itself to the wants of highly intellectual races. The civilization was not perfunctory, but universal and all pervading - furnishing the country not only with political systems, but with social and domestic institutions of the most ramified description. The beneficent nature of these institutions as a whole may be judged from their effects on the character of the Hindu race. Perhaps there are no other people in the world who show so much in their character the advantageous effect of their own civilization. They are shrewd in business, acute in reasoning, thrifty, religious, sober, charitable, obedient to parents, reverential to old age, amiable, law-abiding, compassionate towards the helpless and patient under suffering."

"Broadcasting is a development with which the future must reckon and reckon seriously. Here is an instrument of almost incalculable importance in the social and political life of the community, in affairs national and international."

"When you've got dyslexia and you find something you're good at, you put more into it than anyone else; you can't think the way of the clever folk, so you're always thinking out of the box. So you sometimes can be considerably better at what you latch onto than anybody else. It saved my life, because I had been humiliated and frustrated."

"I would have been a much more popular World Champion if I had always said what people wanted to hear. I might have been dead, but definitely more popular."

"I think I see our ancient mother Caledonia, like Caesar, sitting in the midst of our senate, ruefully looking round about her, covering herself with her royal garment, attending the fatal blow, and breathing out her last with an ‘Et tu quoque mi fili.’"

"Lord Belhaven...did protest in his own name and in name of all these who shall adhere to him that this act is no valid security to the church of Scotland as it is now established by law in case of an incorporating union, and that the church of Scotland can have no real and solid security by any manner of union by which the Claim of Right is unhinged, our parliament incorporated and our distinct sovereignty and independency intirely abolished."

"It's all right for the middle classes, the MSPs; it's great for them to have cheap nannies and gardeners and cleaners. But it's not very lovely for the ordinary working class man trying to get on in the world who finds his job has gone and his wage being compressed because so many people are coming in. That's why you'll find most Ukip support comes from working class and lower middle class people – not that we believe in class in Ukip. Those people are feeling the pressure and have been let down by the traditional parties"

"UKIP's main cause is taking on the establishment, and we've done it very well. We've turned the Conservative party more human than they used to be. They're the party of big business and they don't care very much about the people, but they've had to show they care about the people now. Similarly the Labour party are the party of the town hall bureaucrat, and their large pensions and large salaries. Now they've had to listen to the people."

"The success of the trade unions stimulated technical change, by giving employers and incentive to introduce labour-saving machinery. James Nasmyth told the Royal Commission on Trade Unions of 1867 how the engineering dispute of 1852 had led him to introduce self-acting machine tools, thereby halving his adult labour force and increasing his profits."

"Among the many things that I showed Sir John while at Hammerfield, was a piece of white calico on which I had got printed one million spots. This was for the purpose of exhibiting one million in visible form. In astronomical subjects a million is a sort of unit, and it occurred to me to show what a million really is. Sir John was delighted and astonished at the sight. He went carefully over the outstretched piece with his rule, measured its length and breadth, and verified its correctness."

"The arrangement we greatly preferred was to employ intelligent, well-conducted young lads, the sons of labourers or mechanics, and advance them by degrees according to their merits."

"So long ago as 1856 James Nasmyth told the British Association for the Advancement of Science that the thunderbolt's course was not zigzagged, as artists for centuries had represented, but sinuous like a river."

"We may fill our purses, but we pay a heavy price for it in the loss of picturesqueness and beauty."

"Everything connected with war and warlike exploits is interesting to a boy."

"Time passed by. I had furnished steam hammers to the principal foundries in England. I had sent them abroad, even to Russia. At length it became known to the Lords of the Admiralty that a new power in forging had been introduced."

"The characteristic feature of our modern mechanical improvements, is the introduction of self-acting tool machinery. What every mechanical workman has now to do, and what every boy can do, is not to work himself, but to superintend the beautiful labor of the machine. The whole class of workmen that depend exclusively on their skill is now done away with. Formerly I employed four boys to every mechanic. Thanks to these new mechanical combinations, I have reduced the number of grown-up men from 1.500 to 750. The result was a considerable increase in my profits."

"My first essay at making a steam engine was when I was fifteen. I then made a real working; steam-engine, 1 3/4 diameter cylinder, and 8 in. stroke, which not only could act, but really did some useful work; for I made it grind the oil colours which my father required for his painting. Steam engine models, now so common, were exceedingly scarce in those days, and very difficult to be had; and as the demand for them arose, I found it both delightful and profitable to make them; as well as sectional models of steam engines, which I introduced for the purpose of exhibiting the movements of all the parts, both exterior and interior. With the results of the sale of such models I was enabled to pay the price of tickets of admission to the lectures on natural philosophy and chemistry delivered in the University of Edinburgh. About the same time (1826) I was so happy as to be employed by Professor Leslie in making models and portions of apparatus required by him for his lectures and philosophical investigations, and I had also the inestimable good fortune to secure his friendship. His admirably clear manner of communicating a knowledge of the fundamental principles of mechanical science rendered my intercourse with him of the utmost importance to myself. A hearty, cheerful, earnest desire to toil in his service, caused him to take pleasure in instructing me by occasional explanations of what might otherwise have remained obscure."

"Our history begins before we are born. We represent the hereditary influences of our race, and our ancestors virtually live in us. The sentiment of ancestry seems to be inherent in human nature, especially in the more civilised races. At all events, we cannot help having a due regard for the history of our forefathers. Our curiosity is stimulated by their immediate or indirect influence upon ourselves. It may be a generous enthusiasm, or, as some might say, a harmless vanity, to take pride in the honour of their name. The gifts of nature, however, are more valuable than those of fortune; and no line of ancestry, however honourable, can absolve us from the duty of diligent application and perseverance, or from the practice of the virtues of self-control and self-help."

"In all well-conducted concerns the law of "selection of the fittest" sooner or later comes into happy action, when a loyal and attached set of men work together harmoniously for their own advantage as well as for that of their employers."

"Arcadians both, in youth both flourishing, Both match'd to sing, to answer both prepar'd."

"Now know I what Love is."

"That prudent Hero's wandering, Muse, rehearse, Who (Troy b'ing sack'd) coasting the Universe, Saw many Cities, and their various Modes; Much suffering, tost by Storms on raging Floods, His Friends conducting to their Native Coast: But all in vain, for he his Navy lost, And they their Lives, prophanely feasting on Herds consecrated to the glorious Sun; Who much incens'd obstructed so their way, They ne'er return'd: Jove's Daughter this display."

"The Gods most pleasure in od numbers take."

"O Divine Poet, me thy Verses please More than soft slumber laid in quiet ease."

"When they and Venus to his cottage came, For lust-rewards prefer'd the Cyprian dame."

"Then in a chair, with a rich cushion grac'd And a carv'd foot-stool, he Minerva plac'd. There 'gainst a column sets her lance, where stood Ulysses' javelins, planted like a wood."

"Now fields are green, and trees bear silver buds."

"Ambush'd in grass, a deadly Serpent lyes."

"Why prattle we like children at their play, Spending thus idle breath, enough to freight An able vessel of the primer rate? Our tongues are voluble, and store of words Invention on all arguments affords, Scatter'd on fresh occasions here and there, And what thou say'st thou shalt from others hear. Let us no longer vainly thus contend, Like fenceless women, railing to no end."

"But them I'm not so foolish to believe."

"Begin, sweet Babe, with smiles thy Mother know."

"Then let him swear he ne'er the lady knew, And did with her as men with women do."