I Wasn't Affected by the Crash of 2010; I Went Broke in 2008

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Fortunes are made by buying low and selling too soon. – Baron Rothschild




I told my broker that as long as he doesn’t tell me where my money should go, I won’t tell him where he should go. – Leopold Fechtner



Don’t go broke, go public. – Wall Street Saying



If you hear that “everybody” is buying a certain stock, ask who is selling. – James Dines



Never follow the crowd. – Bernard Baruch



I wasn’t affected by the crash of ’29. I went broke in ’28. – gerald f. Lieberman



A broker is a man who runs your fortune into a shoestring. – Alexander Woollcott

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More Hatched than come to Perfection

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All professional men are handicapped by not being allowed to ignore things which are useless. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe




No man can be a pure specialist without being in a strict sense an idiot. – Geroge Bernhard Shaw



The professional mind is so microscopic that it sometimes ceases to be binocular. – Bernard De Voto



The priest’s friend loses his faith, the doctor’s his health. – Venetian proverb



Lawyers, preachers and tomtit’s eggs. There are more of them hatched than come to perfection. – Benjamin Franklin



Professions, like nations, are civilized to the degree to which they can satirise themselves. – Peter de Vries



It is good for a professional to be reminded that his professionalism is only a husk, the real person must remain an amateur, a lover of the work. – May Sarton

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Standing Firmly in Mid-Air on Both Sides of an Issue

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Professionals built the Titanic – amateurs the Ark. – anonymous




In time a profession is like marriage, we cease to note anything but its inconveniences. – Honore de Balzac



The artistic temperament is a disease that afflict amateurs. – Gilbert Keith Chesterton



A professional is a man who can do his best at a time when he doesn’t particularly feel like it. – Alastair Cooke



The price one pays for pursuing any profession, or calling, is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side. – James Baldwin



An egghead is one who stands firmly on both feet in mid-air on both sides of an issue. – Senator Homer Ferguson



Go not for every grief to the physician, for every quarrel to the lawyer, nor every thirst to the pot. – English proverb

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Prisoners of Thought

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A man may dwell so long upon a thought that it may take him prisoner. – Lord Halifax




When we deliberate it is about means and not ends. – Aristotle



Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth – more than ruin, even more than death. – Bertrand Russell



A man would do well to carry a pencil in his pocket and write down the thoughts of the moment. Those that come unsought are commonly the most valuable and should be secured, because they seldom return. – Francis Bacon





People everywhere enjoy believing things that they know are not true. It spares them the ordeal of thinking for themselves and taking responsibilities for what they know. – Brooks Atkinson



Secret study, silent thought is, after all, the mightiest agent in human affairs. – William Ellery Channing



Deliberate with caution, but act with decision and promptness. – Charles Caleb Colton

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Facts: Labels on Empty Bottles

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Facts apart from their relationships are like labels on empty bottles. – Sven Halla




You would be surprised how hard it often is to translate an action into thought. – Karl Kraus



The direction of the mind is more important than its progress. – Joseph Joubert



Deliberation. The act of examining one’s bread to determine which side it is buttered on. – Ambrose Bierce



In a million people there are a thousand thinkers, and in a thousand thinkers there is one self thinker. – Ludwig Borne



Hundreds can talk to one who can think; thousands can think to one who can see. – John Ruskin



What was once thought can never be unthought. – Friedrich Durrenmatt

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Do Ignored Facts still Exist?

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Don’t look for a fifth foot of a cat. – Spanish proverb




Never cut when you can untie. – Joseph Joubert



He who can take no interest in what is small will take false interest in what is great. – John Ruskin



An ant hole may collapse an embankment. – Japanese proverb



Great battles are really won before they are actually fought. To control our passions we must govern our habits and keep watch over ourselves in the small details of everyday life. – John Lubbock



The greatest American superstition is belief in facts. - Hermann Keyserling



Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. – Aldous Leonard Huxley

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Virtue is Not Hereditary

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When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary. – Thomas Paine




The pursuit of novelty is one of the least original and most meretricious of aesthetic strategies. – Stanley kunitz



We think in generalities, but we live in detail. – Alfred North Whitehead



In great matters men show themselves as they wish to be seen; in small matters as they are. – Gamaliel Bradford



Less is more.
God is in the details. – Mies van der Rohe



Having precise ideas often leads to a man doing nothing. – Paul Valery



People talk fundamentals and superlatives and then make some changes of detail. – Oliver Wendell Holmes

A Blind Date with Knowledge

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What is research but a blind date with knowledge. – Will Henry




Successful research impedes further successful research. – Keith J. Pendred



If politics is the art of the possible, research is surely the art of the soluble. – Sir Peter Medawar



Prosperity and obsolescence are absolutely tied together, and obsolescence makes prosperity. A research organization is the originator of obsolescence. – Charles F. Kettering



Long range planning does not deal with future decisions but with the future of present decisions. – Peter F. Drucker



An act of God was defined as something which no reasonable man could have expected. – Sir Alan Patrick Herbert



You can never plan the future from the past. – Edmund Burke

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In Search of a Great Perhaps

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Research is cheap if you want to stay in business, expensive if you don’t. – anonymous




Enough research will tend to support your theory. – Arthur Bloch



No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong. – Albert Einstein



Basic research is when I’m doing what I don’t know what I’m doing. – Wernher von Braun



I am going in search of a great perhaps. – Francois Rabelais



You can’t make a baby in a month by getting nine women pregnant. – anonymous



The way to do research is to attack the facts at the point of greatest astonishment. – Celia Green

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Judging a Cover by its Book

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Never judge a cover by its book. – Fran Lebowitz




Let advertisers spend the same amount of money improving their product that they do on advertising and they wouldn’t have to advertise it. – Will Rogers



There’s so much plastic in this culture that vinyl leopard skin is becoming an endangered synthetic. – Lily Tomlin



If fools went not to market, bad wares would not be sold. – Turkish proverb



If a thing is old, it is a sign that it was fit to live. The guarantee of continuity is quality. – Eddie Rickenbacker



Good merchandise, even hidden, soon finds buyers. – Titus Maccius Plautus



Nothing is lasting that is feigned. – English proverb

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It's Annihilated the Power of the Strongest Adjectives

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Advertising has annihilated the power of the most powerful adjectives. – Paul Valery




I do not read advertisements – I would spend all my time wanting things. – Archbishop of Cantebury



You can tell the ideal of a nation by its advertisements. – Norman Douglas



The trouble with us in America isn’t that the poetry of life has turned to prose, but that it has turned to advertising copy. – Louis Kronenberger



Anybody can cut prices, but it takes brains to make a better article. – Philip D. Armour



A wide screen just makes a bad film twice as bad. – Samuel Goldwyn



More will mean worse. – Kingsley Amis

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It's Always August Under your Armpits

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On CBS radio the news of Ed Murrow’s death, reprotedly from lung cancer, was followed by a cigarette commercial. – Alexander Kendrick




I have been against commercial broadcasting ever since I heard a Toscanini radio concert in New York interrupted by the sponsor’s slogan – “It may be December outside, ladies; but it is always August under your armpits. – John Snagge



Few people at the beginning of the nineteenth century needed an adman to tell them what they wanted. – John Kenneth Galbraith



The best ad is a good product. – Alan H. Meyer



In advertising there is a saying that if you can keep your head while all those around you are losing theirs – then you just don’t understand the problem. – Hugh M. Beville, Jr.



It is our job to make women unhappy with what they have. – B. Earl Puckett

Making Whole Lies out of Half Truths

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Statitician – A man who can go directly from an unwarranted assumption to a preconceived conclusion. – C. Kent Wright




Advertising is the principal reason why the businessman has come to inherit the earth. -–James R. Adams



Advertising is the art of making whole lies out of half truth. – Edgar A. Shoaff



Advertising can’t sell any product; it can only help to sell a product the people want to buy. – Jeremy Tunstall



Advertising is the modern substitute for argument. – George Santayana



If advertising encourages people to live beyond their means, so does marriage. – Bruce Barton



Doing business without advertising is like winking at a girl in the dark. You know what you’re doing but no one else does. – Stewart H. Britt

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We live in a world of things, and our only connection with them is that we know how to manipulate or to consume them. – Erich Fromm




The cure for “materialism” is to have enough for everybody and to spare. When people are sure of having what they need they cease to think about it. – Henry Ford



In the field of marketing and advertising, statistics are like bikinis; they reveal a good deal that is both interesting and instrutive, but they usually conceal what is really vital. – Harry Henry



How far would Moses have gone if he had taken a poll in Egypt? – Harry S. Truman



It is now proved beyond doubt that smoking is one of the leading causes of statistics. – Fletcher Knebel



A statistician is one who collects data and draws confusions. – Hyman Maxwell Berston

He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts – for support rather than for illumination. – Andrew Lang

The Delusion that Beauty is Goodness

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It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness. – Leo Tolstoy




If Botticelli were alive today he’d be working for Vogue. – Peter Ustinov



For every credibility gap there is a gullability gap. – Richard Clopton



These are difficult days for automobile manufacturers; they’re thinking up ways to make their products safer and new names to make them sound more dangerous. – Thomas la Mance



Had a look at the alligators. Just floating handbags, really. - Trevor Griffiths



I persuade, you educate, they manipulate. – Dr. Allen Crawford



The water closet like the harp is essentially – a solo instrument. – Graffiti

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But the Milk is more likely to be Watered

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Warning – Custormers are Perishable. – Store Sign




The customer doesn’t know what it wants. We offer beautiful things that we like. Anyone who disagrees with our taste is free to go elsewhere. – Tiffany and Co.



If you want good service, serve yourself. – Spanish proverb



The public buys its opinions as it buys its meat, or takes in its milk, on the principle that it is cheaper to do this than to keep a cow. So it is, but the milk is more likely to be watered. – Samuel Butler



Nothing is as irritating as the fellow that chats pleasantly while he’s overcharging you. – Frank McKinney Hubbard


The only part of the hog that the packers waste is the squeal, and the consumers furnish that. – Anonymous


It is naught, it is naught saith the buyer. But when he is gone his way, then he boasteth. – Proverbs

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Great Energy comes from Great Tension

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We promise according to our hopes, and perform according to our fears. – Francois Duc de la Rochefoucauld


Flattery is the infantry of negotiation. – Lord Chandos



When a man repeats a promise again and again, he means to fail you. – Edmund Fuller



Always define your terms. – Eric Partridge



Vows begin when hope dies. – Leonardo da Vinci



The greater the contrast, the greater is the potential. Great energy only comes from a correspondingly great tension between opposites. – Carl Justav Jung



No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public. – Henry Louis Mencken

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Never Tell Them What You Wouldn't Do

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When a person tells you, “I’ll think it over and let you know” – you know. – Olin Miller
Never tell them what you wouldn’t do. – Adam Clayton Powell



If you are scared to go to the brink, you are lost. – John Foster Dulles



The fellow that agrees with everything you say is either a fool or he is getting ready to skin you. – Frank McKinney Hubbard



With someone who holds nothing but trumps, it is impossible to play. – Friedrich Hebbel



We cannot negotiate with those who say, “What’s mine is mine, what’s yours is negotiable. – John F. Kennedy



Whenever you accept our views we shall be in full agreement with you. – Moshe Dayan

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Two Buck Chuck

From our friend Durry Garbutt’s Email

Wal-Mart announced that sometime in 2010 it will begin offering customers a new discount item... The world's largest retail chain is rumored to be teaming up with Ernest & Julio Gallo Winery of California to produce the spirits at an affordable price in the $2 to $5 range.

Wine connoisseurs may not be inclined to put a bottle of the Wal-Mart brand into their shopping carts, but 'There is a market for inexpensive wine,' said Kathy Micken, professor of marketing at University of Arkansas, Bentonville. 'However, branding will be very important.'

Customer surveys were conducted to determine the most attractive name for the Wal-Mart wine brands and varieties. The top surveyed names in order of popularity were:
10. Chateau de Traileur Parc
9. White Trashfindel
8. Big Red Gulp
7. World Championship Riesling
6. NASCARbernet
5. Chef Boyardeaux
4. Peanut Noir
3. I Can't Believe it's not Vinegar
2. Grape Expectations
1. Nasti Spumante

The beauty of Wal-Mart wine is that it can be served with either white meat (Possum) or red meat (Squirrel).

P.S. Don't bother writing back to tell me that this is a hoax. I know possum is not white meat.

You Can't Recondition a Worn Out Welcome

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If you can’t convince ‘em, confuse ‘em. – Harry S. Truman

There’s no way to recondition a welcome when it’s worn out. – Frank McKinney Hubbard

Good salesmanship will find a cure for the common cold shoulder. – Anonymous

One of the best ways to persuade others is with your ears – by listening to them. – Dean Rusk

Be first at the feast and last at the fight. – Indian Proverb

He that travels much knows much. – Thomas Fuller

Keep your broken arm inside your sleeve. – Chinese Proverb

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The Triumph of Mind Over Patter

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In baiting a mouse-trap with cheese, always leave room for the mouse. – Saki

Better wear out shoes than sheets. – Proverb

Sales resistance is the triumph of mind over patter. – Edmund Fuller

Inequality of knowledge is the key to the sale. – Deil O. Gustafson

Don’t try to explain it; just sell it. – Tom Parker

The best salesman we ever heard of was the one who sold two milking machines to a farmer who had only one cow. Then this salesman helped finance the deal by taking the cow as down payment on the two milking machines. – Herbert V. Prochnow

When my client gives me an absolute no, I blow a whistle and announce, “The second half is just beginning.” – Larry Levitt

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He Would Even Sell His Share of the Sun

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A promoter will provide the ocean if you will provide the ships. – Anonymous

He would sell even his share of the sun. – Italian Proverb

If you hype something and it succeeds you’re a genius, it wasn’t a hype. If you hype it and it fails then it’s just a hype. – Neil Bogart

A hustler is a man who will talk you into giving him a free ride and make it seem as if he is doing you a giant favor. – Bill Veeck

Your most important sale in life is to sell yourself to yourself. - Japanese Proverb

Beat your gong and sell your candies. – Chinese Proverb

If you want to persuade people, show the immediate relevance and value of what you’re saying in terms of meeting their needs and desires. – Herb Cohen

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Every Crowd Has a Silver Lining

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Look out for the fellow who lets you do all the talking. – Frank McKinney Hubbard

It’s a hectic crazy life. You’re not like a shoe salesman, who can get rid of his wares. You’re stuck with a product – Yourself. – Nancy Sinatra

In the factory we make cosmetics. In the store we sell hope. – Charles Revlon

Promoters are just guys with two pieces of bread looking for a piece of cheese. – Evil Knievel

Everything comes to him who hustles while he waits. – Thomas A. Edison

It comes in three sizes. Large, Giant and Super. I gave you the smaller size – Large. – Anonymous

Every crowd has a silver lining. – Phineas Taylor Barnum

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The Use of Riches in Discretion Lies

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Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches as to conceive how others can be in want. – Jonathan Swift

Golden shackles are far worse than iron ones. – Mohandas Ghandhi

Abundance is a blessing to the wise;
The use of riches in discretion lies:
Learn this, ye men of wealth – a heavy purse
In a fool’s pocket is a heavy curse. – Richard Cumberland

To open a shop is easy, to keep it open is an art. – Confucius

I detest life-insurance agents; they always argue that some day I shall die, which is not so. – Stephen Butler-Leacock

When buyers don’t fall for prices, prices must fall for buyers. – Anonymous

When I sell liquor, it’s called bootlegging; when my patrons serve it on silver trays on Lake Shore Drive, it’s called hospitality. – Al Capone

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More People Die from Worry than Work

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The reason worry kills more people than work is that more people worry than work. – Robert Frost

Davis’s Dictum – Problems that go away by themselves come back by themselves.

Deborkowski’s Laundry Law – If you come out of the laundromat with an even number of socks, you have someone else’s laundry.

DeCicco’s Law – More policemen die in their autos day-dreaming about gunfights than die as a result of gunfights. – Alexander DeCicco (Deputy sherriff)

DeRoy’s Political Rule – A politician solves every problem before election but very few after. – Richard H. DeRoy

Dial’s Discovery – No matter what you do to instant coffee, it always tastes like instant coffee. – Thomas H. Dial

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The Most Powerful Drug used by Mankind

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I understand a fury in your words, but not the words. – William Shakespeare

Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind. – Rudyard Kipling

A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver. – Bible

Good words are worth much and cost little. – Gerorge Hebert

Work is the grand cure of all the maladies and miseries that ever beset mankind. – Thomas Carlyle

People don’t choose their careers; they are engulfed by them. – John Dos Passos

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