Historically the advancement of civilization has been based on the desire for two things: power and money. The quest for power has built and destroyed empires. The quest for money built the United States and is responsible for most of the inventions of mankind.
Money differs from power in that it is a liquid thing. It is no use in and of itself. It is only useful in so far as it can be used to buy things and do things. The earlier part of the twentieth century saw a great concentration of money and power in a relatively few individuals, the creators of industrial empires: Rockefeller, Carnegie, Frick, Mellon, Vanderbilt, Morgan, Gould. The money which these men accumulated was not static. They lived lavishly in Newport or New York City, but their industrial empires brought the Industrial Revolution to America. This industry accounted for the wave of immigrants which passed through Ellis Island on their way to the New World, a land of possibilities and promise. Their philanthropy built universities, libraries, and museums.
Today, liberal thought suggests that the government is more competent at such matters as endowing the arts and sponsoring universities than are private individuals. It suggests that should decide through subsidies which industries should survive and which should not. History suggests otherwise.
A private railroad car is not an acquired taste. One takes to it
immediately.
Mrs. August Belmont
I don't care how the poor live; my only regret is that they live
at all.
George Moore
Hell, Lee [Iacocca] doesn't want to be President, he wants to be
appointed Pope.
Keith Crane,
Automotive News
If you only talk cars, people say you're a provincial son of a
bitch. If you're outspoken, then they say you're running for
office.
Lee Iacocca
I don't need a $100 million mistake. Try to make a $5 million
mistake if you have to make one.
Lee Iacocca,
Chrysler CEO to top managers
There's no secret about success. Did you ever know a successful
man that didn't tell you all about it?
Kin Hubbard
The general manager of the Lincoln-Mercury Division said one day
in a meeting, "I'm not interested in safety because it isn't
popular." He was a mouthpiece and a fathead but it was typical
of our manager.
Fred Hooven
It is morally wrong to allow suckers to keep their money.
Cornfield's Law
It is a socialist idea that making profits is a vice; the real
vice is making losses.
Winston Churchill
Whenever man come up with a better mousetrap, nature invariably
comes up with a better mouse.
James Carswell
You can only drink thirty or forty glasses of beer a day, no
matter how rich you are.
Adolphus Busch
Professor Galbraith is horrified by the number of Americans who
have bought cars with tail fins on them, and I am horrified by
the number of Americans who take seriously the proposals of Mr.
Galbraith.
William F. Buckley Jr.
If General Motors ever made the claims for a Buick that Hustler
made for a set of genitals, Ralph Nader would lead a mob on
Detroit.
R. Emmett Tyrrell
Enthusiasm for conservation can be fashioned into a nasty weapon
for those who dislike business on general principles.
William F. Buckley Jr.
Money doesn't always bring happiness. People with ten million
dollars are no happier than people with nine million dollars.
Hobart Brown
One says that money doesn't buy happiness. Without a doubt, one
was speaking of the money of others.
Sacha Guity
Money may not buy friends, but it certainly gives you a better
class of enemies.
Metropolis News
Money won't buy happiness, but it will pay the salaries of a
large research staff to solve the problem.
Bill Vaughan
Money doesn't buy happiness. It buys great hookers -- but not
happiness.
Burt Reynolds
Capitalism without bankruptcy is like Christianity without Hell.
Frank Borman,
Eastern Airlines president
All progress is based upon the universal desire of every
organism to live beyond its income.
Samuel Butler
Let us all be happy and live within our means even if we have to
borrow the money to do it.
Artemus Ward
It's pretty hard to tell what brings happiness; poverty and
wealth have both failed.
Kin Hubbard
The rich who are unhappy are worse off than the poor who are
unhappy; for the poor at least cling to the hope that more money
would solve their problems, but the rich know better.
Sydney Harris
It's what your right arm's for.
Courage Beer ad
In advertising there is a saying that if you can keep your head
while those around you are losing theirs -- then you just don't
understand the problem.
Hugh M. Beville Jr.
If advertising encourages people to live beyond their means, so
does matrimony.
Bruce Barton
Advertising is 85% confusion and 15% commission.
Fred Allen
Advertising came into the world when men became too impatient to
wait for Mrs. Jones to tell Mrs. Smith that Brown's pickles were
good.
Roy Durstine
We grew up founding our dreams on the infinite promise of
American advertising.
Zelda Fitzgerald
Advertising is a valuable economic factor because it is the
cheapest way of selling goods, particularly if the goods are
worthless.
Sinclair Lewis
You can fool all of the people all of the time if the
advertising is right and the budget is big enough.
Joseph E. Levine
Advertising may be described as the art of arresting human
intelligence long enough to get money from it.
Stephen Leacock
Great marketing cannot sell a pedestrian product very well.
John Scully,
President of Apple Computer
Doing business without advertising is like winking at a girl in
the dark. You know what you are doing, but nobody else does.
Steuart Henderson Britt
The big print giveth and the small print taketh away.
Tom Waitts,
on advertising
Beware of imitations.
Ad for Virginia "falsies" manufacturer
Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted, and the trouble
is I don't know which half.
John Wanamaker
Man is at his vilest when he erects a billboard. When I retire
from Madison Avenue I am going to start a secret society of
masked vigilantes who will travel about the world on silent motor
bikes, chopping down posters at the dark of the moon. How many
juries will convict us when we are caught in these acts of
beneficent citizenship?
David Ogilvy
If you want to be equal with me, you can get your own
Rolls-Royce, your own house and your own million dollars.
Muhammad Ali
To force myself to earn more money, I determined to spend more.
James Agate
Bankruptcy is a legal proceeding in which you put your money in
your pants pocket and give your coat to your creditors.
Joey Adams
If governments refused to pay, how could we collect without an
army?
George Champion,
former Chase Manhattan chairman,
explaining his opposition to bank loans
to foreign countries
If you owe a bank enough money you own it.
Anon
One rule which woe betides the banker who fails to heed it,
Never lend any money unless they don't need it.
Ogden Nash
Bankers are just like everybody else, except richer.
Ogden Nash
When business accepts help from the government, it can be like
going to bed with a hippopotamus. It's nice and warm for the
moment, but then your bedmate rolls over and crushes you.
Donald Rumsfield
Will you please tell me what to do with all the Vice Presidents
a bank has? Why, the United States is the biggest institution in
the world and they have only one Vice President and nobody has
ever found anything for him to do.
Will Rogers
You cannot create employees without first creating employers.
Jack Kemp,
speaking of free enterprise zones
Henry Ford made a lot of money making cars at one time, but that
was a small advantage to him compared to the benefit to millions
of people who for the first time in their lives were emancipated
from common public carriers and could live where they wanted,
move at the hours they wanted, to the places they wanted. Ford
collected a billion bucks, but that was peanuts compared to the
benefits.
George Stigler,
University of Chicago economist
That some should be rich shows that others may become rich, and
hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise.
Abraham Lincoln
A capitalist is a catalyst. Money is a useless thing. You can't
eat the stuff. It's what it makes. It's the sinew of the whole
system.
Malcolm S. Forbes
Keeping accounts is of no use when a man is spending his own
money. You won't eat less beef today because you have written
down what it cost yesterday.
Samuel Johnson
A businessman needs three umbrellas -- one to leave at the
office, one to leave at home and one to leave on the train.
Paul Dickson
There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which
should not be done at all.
Peter Drucker
If you think all government companies are alike, look at
Venezuela. Politicians run one [company], businessmen another.
Now guess who makes the cash. And guess who blows it.
Forbes
It seems that it is only in the United States that an almost
masochistic attack on the position of its own oil companies
exists.
John J. McCloy
If things can go wrong, they will -- and when they do, blame it
on the oil industry.
API Corollary
to Murphy's Law
Since the federal govenment states that the five-cent gasoline
tax would provide 320,000 jobs, then a 10-cent tax would provide
640,000 jobs and a 50-cent tax would provide 3.2 million jobs. We
could solve the entire unemployment problem with a $1-a-gallon
tax, thus employing 6.4 million. A $2-a-gallon tax would give
jobs to the unemployed in India, Africa, China, and the jobless
of the world. This certainly would prove that the capitalist
system is the best system devised by the mind of man. Who needs
factories, farms or a merchant marine? When all you need is a tax
on gasoline and all the problems of the entire world are solved.
Stuart Oliver,
letter in the Oakland Tribune
Well we didn't get rich in 1983, either, so cancel our order for
champagne. We'll take peanut butter instead. We'd like to be
sparkle-eyed and don't-give-a-damn about the situation, but the
fact is we aren't all that fond of peanut butter. We'd rather be
rich.
Robert O. Frederick,
Year-end editorial in Drilling
The price of an article is exactly what it will fetch.
Sir Marcus Samuel,
founder of Shell Oil
Money is the wise man's religion.
Euripides
Work is the best method devised for killing time.
William Feather
Here is my best advice on the matter of deductibles: just count
off on your fingers all the items that you suspect might be
deductible -- and then forget them, because they aren't.
W.C. Fields
Where there is a will, there's prosperity around the corner.
W.C. Fields
Her voice sounded like money.
F.Scott Fitzgerald
"Money isn't everything" according to those who have it.
Malcolm S. Forbes
The line between idiosyncracy and idiocy is money.
Malcolm S. Forbes
Detroit would be better off today if they researched a better
engine, rather than people's color preferences.
Malcolm S. Forbes
A man who makes a one-dollar profit on his expense account is
dishonest. A man who loses five cents on one is a damned fool.
Gene Fowler
The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as
the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to
steal bread.
Anatole France
By working faithfully eight hours a day, you may eventually get
to be a boss and work twelve hours a day.
Robert Frost
The reason worry kills more people than work is that more people
worry than work.
Robert Frost
It is better to give than to lend, and it costs about the same.
Sir Philip Gibbs
Success is simple. Do what's right, the right way, at the right
time.
Arnold Glasgow
If that's all he can get, and he takes it, I
should say it's enough.
J.P. Morgan, in response to the question "Do you consider $10 a week enough for a
longshoreman with a family to support?"
With GM paying $10 an hour, these people who come out of the
cotton patch making less than $3.10 an hour wouldn't complain if
they had to roll a peanut across the road with their nose.
Alex Ott,
UAW international representative
trying to force unionization on a GM
plant in Decatur, Ala.
I can hire one-half of the working class and kill the other
half.
Jay Gould
Money is the poor people's credit card.
Marshall McLuhan
What this country needs is a good five-cent cigar.
Kin Hubbard
There are plenty of good five cent cigars in the country. The
trouble is that they cost a quarter. What the country really
needs is a good five cent nickel.
Thomas Marshall,
Vice-President
Even the law of gravitation would be brought into dispute were
there a pecuniary interest involved.
Thomas Macaulay
The rich never feel so good as when they speak of their
possessions as responsibilities.
Robert Lynd
People will buy anything that is one to a customer.
Sinclair Lewis
Samuel Gompers has spent his life trying to keep labor from
working too hard and has succeeded beyond his wildest dreams.
Will Rogers
A study of economics usually reveals that the best time to buy
anything is last year.
Marty Allen
The instability of the economy is equalled only by the
instability of economists.
John H. Williams
If you can count your money, you don't have a billion dollars.
J. Paul Getty
I don't meet competition. I crush it.
Charles Revson
We have yet to find a significant case where the company did not
move in the direction of the chief executive's home.
Ken Patton
It would be wrong if the government failed to intervene to stop
this great industry from committing suicide.
Henry Duffy,
Air Line Pilots Association president,
telling Congress that the airlines
had cut fares too much
The biggest help government here can provide to business is to
stay off its back. Silicon Valley would not have existed with
the government determining that we shall have more software, or
that we shall have 11 laboratories around the country under
politically appointed officials.
Malcolm S. Forbes
Only one fellow in ten thousand understands the currency
question, and we meet him every day.
Kin Hubbard
The public be damned. I am working for my stockholders.
William H. Vanderbilt
They call me eccentric. They used to call me nuts. I haven't
changed. The only difference between being eccentric and being
nuts is the number of security boxes you own.
Alfred McGuire,
American basketball coach
One of society's absurd delusions is that the spending of money
can cure something.
Vernon Howard
The cleverly expressed opposite of any generally accepted idea
is worth a fortune to somebody.
F. Scott Fitzgerald
If a man is wise, he gets rich an' if he gets rich, he gets
foolish, or his wife does. That's what keeps the money movin'
around.
Finley Peter Dunne
Rather than earn money, it was Thoreau's idea to reduce his
wants so that he would not need to buy anything. As he went
around preaching this ingenious idea, the shopkeepers of Concord
hoped he would drop dead.
Richard Armour
We all like to see everybody make a profit... a very little.
Cullen Hightower
He remembered poor Julian [actually F. Scott Fitzgerald] and his
romantic awe of them and how he had started a story once that
began, "The very rich are different from you and me." And how
someone had said to Julian, "Yes, they have more money."
Ernest Hemmingway
If you really want you people to innovate, buy a science fiction
book, tear off the covers, and tell them it's history.
Nolan Bushnell,
founder of Atari
The reward of energy, enterprise and thrift is taxes.
William Feather
Some people use one-half their ingenuity to get into debt, and
the other half to avoid paying it.
George D. Prentice
You have to choose [as a voter] between trusting to the natural
stability of gold and the natural stability of the honesty and
intelligence of the members of the Government. And, with due
respect for those gentlemen, I advise you, as long as the
Capitalist system lasts, to vote for gold.
George Bernard Shaw
The more money you give to people the better; and the less
advice.
John Cowper Powys
Charity, like nature, abhors a vacuum. Next to putting it in a
bank, men like to squander their superfluous wealth on those to
whom it is sure to be doing the least possible good.
William Hazlitt
The best way to help the poor is not to become one of them.
Laing Hancock,
Australian millionaire
You are affluent when you buy what you want, do what you wish
and don't give a thought to what it costs.
J.P. Morgan
The entire essence of America is the hope to first make money --
then make money with money -- then make lots of money with lots
of money.
Paul Erdman
The railroads are not run for the benefit of the dear public.
That cry is nonsense. They are built for men who invest their
money and expect to get a fair percentage of the same.
William H. Vanderbilt
If you take a traditional bureaucracy and give it computers,
then instead of generating 30 useless pieces of paper, you
generate 300.
Paul A. Strassman
Automating a mess yields an automated mess.
Michael Hammer
To err is human, to forgive is not company policy.
poster
It's not a cheaper car that people want. It's an expensive car
that costs less.
Anon
Many of us spend half our time wishing for things we could have
if we didn't spend half our time wishing.
Alexander Woollcott
Nowadays people are divided into three classes -- the Haves, the
Have- Nots, and the Have-Not-Paid-For-What-They-Haves.
Earl Wilson
When I was young I thought that money was the most important
thing in life; now that I am old I know it is.
Oscar Wilde
People who cannot find time for recreation are obliged sooner or
later to find time for illness.
John Wanamaker
When red-haired people are above a certain social grade their
hair is auburn.
Mark Twain
The poor are the only ones who suffer. And they're used to it.
Gary Trudeau
Executives are people who have their names printed on company
letterheads because no one can read their signatures.
Today's Chuckle,
Los Angeles Times Syndicate
People are wealthy. It is pastries that are rich.
John Starrs,
commenting on the "Forbes 400: The
Richest People in America"
The greatest act of patriotism is making a profit.
Dean Spatz
Do not waste you time with Social Questions. What is the matter
with the Poor is poverty. What is the matter with the Rich is
uselessness.
George Bernard Shaw
The universal regard for money is the one hopeful fact in our
civilization.
George Bernard Shaw
I hate the poor and look forward eagerly to their extermination.
George Bernard Shaw
There is hardly anything in the world that some man cannot make
a little worse and a little cheaper.
John Ruskin
Don't gamble. Take all your savings and buy some good stock and
hold it until the price goes up. If the price doesn't go up,
don't buy it.
Will Rogers
Thanks a thousand.
Nelson Rockefeller
Poverty, of course, is no disgrace, but it is damned annoying.
William Pitt
All money nowadays seems to be produced today with a natural
homing instinct for the treasury.
Prince Philip,
Duke of Edinburgh
I inherited my ability from both parents; my mother's ability
for spending money, and my father's ability for not earning it.
Laurence J. Peter
Anybody who thinks there's safety in numbers hasn't looked at
the stock market pages.
Irene Peter
The two most beautiful words in the English language are: check
enclosed.
Dorothy Parker
I have an inviolable rule against employing nepots and spouses,
because they breed politics. Whenever two people get married, one
of them must depart - preferably the female, to look after the
baby.
David Ogilvy,
founder of the Ogilvy & Mather advertising
agency
General Motors could buy Delaware if DuPont were willing to sell
it.
Ralph Nader