Great Throughts Treasury

"I'm helping to create an economic system that will respect and protect the earth—one which would replace corporate globalization with a global network of local living economies. Business is beautiful when it's a vehicle for serving the common good." - Judy Wicks

"For the strategic mind to work creatively, it needs the stimulus of a good, insightful analysis. In order to conduct a good analysis, it takes a strategic and inquisitive mind to come up with the right questions and phrase them as solution-oriented issues... Decisions made for the sake of vindicating one’s own preconceived notions do not lead to creative solutions. Intuitive or gut-feel alone does not ensure secure business plans. It takes a good balance between the two to come up with a successful strategy." - Kenichi Ohmae

"What business strategy is all about-what distinguishes it from all other kinds of business planning-is, in a word, competitive advantage. Without competitors there would be no need for strategy, for the sole purpose of strategic planning is to enable the company to gain, as efficiently as possible, a sustainable edge over its competitors." - Kenichi Ohmae

"Acting without design, occupying oneself without making a business of it, finding the great in what is small and the many in the few, repaying injury with kindness, effecting difficult things while they are easy, and managing great things in their beginnings: this is the method of Tao." - Lao Tzu, ne Li Urh, also Laotse, Lao Tse, Lao Tse, Lao Zi, Laozi, Lao Zi, La-tsze

"The business of a university is... teaching the student how facts are converted into the truth." - Harold Laski, fully Harold Joseph Laski

"Creative ideas flourish best in a shop which preserves some spirit of fun. Nobody is in business for fun, but that does not mean there cannot be fun in business. " - Leo Burnett

"The sole purpose of business is service. The sole purpose of advertising is explaining the service which business renders." - Leo Burnett

"I love those who can smile in trouble, who can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink, but they whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves their conduct, will pursue their principles unto death." - Leonardo da Vinci, fully Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci

"Living is made up of these little things - a day to day business punctuated with things seen, seen best when we weren't looking for them, or things that just happened to us while we were walking "dully along" and that we ought to notice these things. It is very easy to bandage the eyes and tell everyone that life is dull. But I am called odd by these people because I really don't think so. I try to make the day have a THING in it, and it usually does whether I try or not. And that makes the day. Period. But I am purposeless. I am talking of this far too seriously, but it rather hurts when I think that I was once very vulnerable to the charges that come my way. I have tried so damned hard to put a thing as simply as it appeared to me, and tried too damned hard not to let myself blow up a simple happening into a symbol of unrequited love but to leave it as it is. Shit." - Lew Welch, fully Lewis Barrett Welch, Jr.

"Unlike any other business in the United States, sports must preserve an illusion of perfect innocence. The mounting of this illusion defines the purpose and accounts for the immense wealth of American sports. It is the ceremony of innocence that the fans pay to see -- not the game or the match or the bout, but the ritual portrayal of a world in which time stops and all hope remains plausible, in which everybody present can recover the blameless expectations of a child, where the forces of light always triumph over the powers of darkness." - Lewis H. Lapham

"The business of everybody is the business of nobody." -

"The great business of life is to be, to do, to do without and to depart. " - John Morley, 1st Viscount Morely of Blackburn, Lord Morley

"Our greatest opportunities for advancing productivity and improving living standards are to be found in the field of human relationships. Having achieved a better understanding of each other and their common responsibility to consumers and investors, both management and labor should do all in their power to educate the American public to understanding of the simple economic facts that underlie our industrial and business relationships." - Louis Ruthenburg

"We must have ideals and try to live up to them, even if we never quite succeed. Life would be a sorry business without them. With them it's grand and great." - Lucy Maud Montgomery, aka Maud or L.M. Montgomery

"People must learn that the accumulation of wealth by the successful conduct of business is the corollary of the improvement of their own standard of living and vice versa. They must realize that bigness in business is not an evil, but both the cause and effect of the fact that they themselves enjoy all those amenities whose enjoyment is called the “American way of life. " - Ludwig von Mises, fully Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises

"Diplomats make it their business to conceal the facts." - Margaret Sanger, fully Margaret Higgins Sanger Slee

"All things being equal, people will do business with a friend; all things being unequal, people will still do business with a friend." - Mark McCormack, fully Mark Hume McCormack

"I have tried to make all my acts and commercial moves the result of definite consideration and sound judgment. There were never any great ventures or risks. I practiced honest, slow-growing business methods, and tried to back them with energy and good system." - Marshall Field

"I very linearly [sic] wish you would exert yourself so as to keep all your matters in order your self without depending on others as that is the only way to be happy to have all your business in your own hands." - Martha Washington, fully Martha Dandridge Curtis Washington

"The divine purpose of the present information revolution, for instance, which gives an individual unprecedented power and opportunity, is to allow us to share knowledge—spiritual knowledge—with each other, empowering and unifying individuals everywere. We need to use today’s interactive technology not just for business or leisure but to interlink as people – to create a welcome environment for the interaction of our souls, our hearts, our visions." - Menachem Mendel Schneerson, known as the Lubavitcher Rebbe

"One of the things I benefited from when I started this business was that I didn’t know anything. I was just instinct with no preconceived notions. This enabled me to learn and change quickly without having to worry about maintaining any kind of status quo, like some of my bigger competitors." - Michael Dell, fully Michael Saul Dell

"Contrary to popular belief, my experience has shown me that the people who are exceptionally good in business aren't so because of what they know but because of their insatiable need to know more." - Michael E. Gerber

"Most entrepreneurs are merely technicians with an entrepreneurial seizure. Most entrepreneurs fail because you are working IN your business rather than ON your business." - Michael E. Gerber

"Actually, the New Deal's central dedication was to business recovery rather than social reform." - Michael Parenti

"In almost every enterprise, government has provided business with opportunities for private gain at public expense. Government nurtures private capital accumulation through a process of subsidies, supports, and deficit spending and an increasingly inequitable tax system. From ranchers to resort owners, from brokers to bankers, from auto makers to missile makers, there prevails a welfare for the rich of such magnitude as to make us marvel at the corporate leaders’ audacity in preaching the virtues of self-reliance whenever lesser forms of public assistance threaten to reach hands other than their own." - Michael Parenti

"I believe that if we had and would keep our dirty, bloody, dollar-soaked fingers out of the business of these nations so full of depressed, exploited people, they will arrive at a solution of their own.... And if unfortunately their revolution must be of the violent type because the "haves" refuse to share with the "have-nots" by any peaceful method, at least what they get will be their own, and not the American style, which they don't want and above all don't want crammed down their throats by Americans." - Smedley Butler, fully General Smedley Darlington Butler. aka Old Gimlet Eye, The Fighting Quaker and Old Duckboard

"Make it thy business to know thyself, which is the most difficult lesson in the world." - Miguel de Cervantes, fully Miguel de Cervantes Saaversa

"The names we use to describe personality traits - such as extrovert, high achiever, or paranoid - refer to the specific patterns people have used to structure their attention. At the same party, the extrovert will seek out and enjoy interactions with others, the high achiever will look for useful business conacts, and the paranoid will be on guard for signs of danger he must avoid. Attention can be invested in innumerable ways, ways that can make life eihther rich or miserable." - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály

"Without respect, the subtle alchemy that binds an organization or that serves as the impetus for a business transaction would dissolve into mutual suspicion and hostility." - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály

"When each of these three elements of vision--concern for excellence, for people and for the wider environment--are present, business is transformed from a tool for making profits into a creative, humane experiment for improving life. " - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály

"So the question is, do corporate executives, provided they stay within the law, have responsibilities in their business activities other than to make as much money for their stockholders as possible? And my answer to that is, no they do not." - Milton Friedman, fully John Milton Friedman

"What does it mean to say that government might have a responsibility? Government can't have a responsibility any more than the business can. The only entities which can have responsibilities are people. " - Milton Friedman, fully John Milton Friedman

"The proper role of government is exactly what John Stuart Mill said in the middle of the 19th century in On Liberty. The proper role of government is to prevent other people from harming an individual. Government, he said, never has any right to interfere with an individual for that individual's own good. The case for prohibiting drugs is exactly as strong and as weak as the case for prohibiting people from overeating. We all know that overeating causes more deaths than drugs do. If it's in principle OK for the government to say you must not consume drugs because they'll do you harm, why isn't it all right to say you must not eat too much because you'll do harm? Why isn't it all right to say you must not try to go in for skydiving because you're likely to die? Why isn't it all right to say, "Oh, skiing, that's no good, that's a very dangerous sport, you'll hurt yourself"? Where do you draw the line? It does harm a great many other people, but primarily because it's prohibited. There are an enormous number of innocent victims now. You've got the people whose purses are stolen, who are bashed over the head by people trying to get enough money for their next fix. You've got the people killed in the random drug wars. You've got the corruption of the legal establishment. You've got the innocent victims who are taxpayers who have to pay for more and more prisons, and more and more prisoners, and more and more police. You've got the rest of us who don't get decent law enforcement because all the law enforcement officials are busy trying to do the impossible. And, last, but not least, you've got the people of Colombia and Peru and so on. What business do we have destroying and leading to the killing of thousands of people in Colombia because we cannot enforce our own laws? If we could enforce our laws against drugs, there would be no market for these drugs." - Milton Friedman, fully John Milton Friedman

"There are seven things that will destroy us [seven sins of the world]: Wealth without work; Pleasure without conscience; Knowledge without character; Religion without sacrifice; Politics without principle; Science without humanity; Business without ethics." - Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu

"The Blessed Holy One constantly constricts his godliness from utmost infinity to the most finite center point of this physical world and he sends to each person thought, speech and deed according to the person and according to the time and place. He enclothes within the thought, speech and deed, hints, in order to bring the person close to his service. Therefore a person needs to delve his mind into this and expand his consciousness in order to understand what the hints are in their details which Hashem is sending to him in the thoughts, words, and deeds of this day according to the specific circumstances he finds himself in. In business or work and in everything that Hashem sends to him each day he needs to delve and expand his mind in it, in order to understand the hints of Hashem. " - Nachman of Breslov, aka Reb Nachman Breslover or Bratslav, Nachman from Uman NULL

"The natural inclination of a child is to take pleasure in the use of the mind no less than of the body. The child's primary business is learning. It is also the primary entertainment. To retain that orientation into adulthood, so that consciousness is not a burden but a joy, is the mark of the successfully developed human being." - Nathaniel Branden

"When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience, and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; culture-death is a clear possibility." - Neil Postman

"As soon as it is completed, it will be possible for a business man in New York to dictate instructions, and have them instantly appear in type at his office in London or elsewhere. He will be able to call up, from his desk, and talk to any telephone subscriber on the globe, without any change whatever in the existing equipment. An inexpensive instrument, not bigger than a watch, will enable its bearer to hear anywhere, on sea or land, music or song, the speech of a political leader, the address of an eminent man of science, or the sermon of an eloquent clergyman, delivered in some other place, however distant. In the same manner any picture, character, drawing, or print can be transferred from one to another place. Millions of such instruments can be operated from but one plant of this kind. More important than all of this, however, will be the transmission of power, without wires, which will be shown on a scale large enough to carry conviction." - Nikola Tesla

"For the Age has itself become vulgar, and most people have no idea to what extent they are themselves tainted. The bad manners of all parliaments, the general tendency to connive at a rather shady business transaction if it promises to bring in money without work, jazz and Negro dances as the spiritual outlet in all circles of society, women painted like prostitutes, the efforts of writers to win popularity by ridiculing in their novels and plays the correctness of well-bred people, and the bad taste shown even by the nobility and old princely families in throwing off every kind of social restraint and time-honored custom: all of these go to prove that it is now the vulgar mob that gives the tone. " - Oswald Spengler, fully Oswald Manuel Arnold Gottfried Spengler

"Engage in one kind of business only, and stick to it faithfully until you succeed, or until your experience shows that you should abandon it." - P.T. Barnum, fully Phineas Taylor Barnum

"Many persons are always kept poor, because they are too visionary. Every project looks to them like certain successes, and therefore they keep changing from one business to another, always in hot water, always 'under the harrow'." - P.T. Barnum, fully Phineas Taylor Barnum

"In modern business it is not the crook who is to be feared most, it is the honest man who doesn't know what he is doing." - Pablo Casals, fully Pau Casals i Defilló

"The people who make art their business are mostly imposters. " - Pablo Picasso, fully Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso

"A king is ruined through bad advisers, A Sanyasi through company, A son through over-indulgence, A Brahamin through lack of studies of shastras, A business or a firm through neglect, And a family and character through contact with bad people." - Panchatantra or The Panchatantra NULL

"Language became a colorless and as indistinct as the business suit which is now worm by everyone, by the scholar, by the businessman, by the professional killer. Being accustomed to a dry and dreary norm and sees in it an obvious sign of arrogance and aggression; viewing authority with almost religious awe he gets into a frenzy when he sees someone pluck the beard of his favorite prophet." - Paul Feyerabend, fully Paul Karl Feyerabend

"The sciences of today are business enterprises run on business principles. Research in large institutes is not guided by Truth and Reason but by the most rewarding fashion, and the great minds of today increasingly turn to where the money is - which means military matters." - Paul Feyerabend, fully Paul Karl Feyerabend

"Because the restorative economy inverts ingrained beliefs about how business functions, it may precipitate unusual changes in the economy...the restorative economy will be one in which some businesses get smaller but hire more people, where money can be made by selling the absence of a product or sevice, as is the case where public utilities sell efficiency rather than additional power, and where profits increase when productivity is lowered. Corporations can compete to conserve and increase resources rather than deplete them. Complex and onerous regulations will be replaced by motivating standards." (This is exactly the situation where we are now at with R2000 and masonry heaters. We have the option of adopting an enlightened approach to change, favouring collaborative efforts to redesign codes and standards for everyone's benefit)." - Paul Hawken

"The question that continues to reverberate to this day is whether human rights trump the rights of business, or vice versa, a conflict that has been ongoing for more than three hundred years... From an economic viewpoint, what citizens have been trying to do for two hundred years is to force business to pay full freight, to internalize their costs to society instead of externalizing them onto a river, a town, a single patient, or a whole generation." - Paul Hawken

"What WTO seeks to protect is business and growth, not people and the environment, with an underlying assumption that the wealthier a country becomes, the better it is able to protect its people and its environment. It has not turned out that way... Tens of thousands of NGOs work toward amending the market policies of globalization because markets are not designed to be surrogates for ethics, values, and justice." - Paul Hawken

"In internationalization, each nation sets its own trade standards and will do business with other nations that are willing to meet those standards. Do nations abuse this system? Always and constantly, and the United States is among the worst offenders in that regard. But where democracies prevail, internationalization does provide a means for people to set their own policy, influence decisions, and determine their own future. Globalization, in contrast, envisions standardized legislation for the entire world, with capital and goods moving at will superior to the rule of national laws. Globalization supersedes nation, state, region, and village. While diminishing the power of nationalism is a good idea, elimination of sovereignty may not be if it is replaced by a corporate boardroom." - Paul Hawken