The Other "N" word

Image by Sam Ilić via FlickrThe trouble with the profit system has always been that it was highly unprofitable to most people. – Elwyn Brooks White

Zoologist Desmond Morris once did an experiment that exposed an ape to the “profit motive.” First of all he got it to draw and paint, and found that it was doing lovely things. Then he started rewarding the ape with peanuts for its work.

“Soon it was doing any old scrawl to get the peanuts,” Morris said wryly. “I had introduced commercialism into the ape’s world, and ruined him as an artist. – Thomas Wiseman



Profitability is the sovereign criterion of the enterprise. – Peter F. Drucker



There are occasions when it is undoubtedly better to incur loss than to make gain. – Titus Maccius Plautus



Prefer a loss to a dishonest gain: the one brings pain at the moment, the other for all time. – chilon



Net – the biggest word in the language of business. – Herbert Casson



Few have heard of Fra Luca Parioli, the inventor of double-entry bookkeeping; but he has probably had much more influence on human life than has Dante or Michelangelo. – Herbert J. Muller

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A Corporation has No Conscience

Image by The Rocketeer via FlickrDo not tell me how hard you work. Tell me how much you get done. – James J. Ling




Labor is the capital of our working men. – Grover Cleveland



A corporation cannot blush. – Howell Walsh



It is truly enough said that a corporation has no conscience; but a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation without a conscience. – Henry David Throeau



The modern corporation is a political institution; its purpose is the creation of legitimate power in the industrial sphere. – Peter F. Drucker



Concentration of economic power in all-embracing corporations represents a kind of private government which is a power unto itself – a regimentation of other people’s money and other people’s lives. – Franklin Delano Roosevelt



Corporations, which should be the carefully restrained creatures of the law and the servants of the people, are fast becoming the people’s masters. – Grover Cleveland

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Refuting A Sneer

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A fixed idea ends in madness or heroism. – Victor Hugo

Who can refute a sneer? – William Paley

An invasion of armies can be resisted; an invasion of ideas cannot be resisted. – Victor Hugo

There are an enormous number of managers who have retired on the job. – Peter F. Drucker

Yearning is not only a good way to go crazy but also a pretty good place to hide from the real truth. – Jay Cocks

One of the greatest pieces of economic wisdom is to know what you do not know. – John Kenneth Galbraith

Ignorance is not bliss – it is oblivion. – Philip Wylie

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Stranger than Kiwi Birds at Mating Time

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Entrepreneurship is the last refuge of the troublemaking individual. – James K. Glassman

The best person you interview isn’t necessarily the best person for the job. – Robert Half

Supervisor-subordianate relationships are undoubtedly among the oddest forms of human interaction. They are even stranger than kiwi birds at mating time. – Jeffrey G. Allen

Just being available and attentive is a great way to use listening as a management tool. Some employees will come in, talk for twenty minutes, and leave having solved their problem entirely by themselves. – Nicholas V. Iuppa

Anyone who says he isn’t going to resign, four times, definitely will. – John Kenneth Galbraith

It’s amazing how many people ruin their backs by sitting endlessly at their $3,000 computer in a $3 chair. – John Bear

So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work. – Peter F. Drucker

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We Sell Hope

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Fuel is not sold in a forest, nor fish on a lake. – Chinese proverb

People will buy anything that’s one to a customer. – Sinclair Lewis

In our factory, we make lipstick. In our advertising, we sell hope. – Charles Revson

Anything that won’t sell, I don’t want to invent. Its sale is proof of utility and utility is success. – Thomas A. Edison

There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer. – Peter Drucker

No more good must be attempted than the people can bear. – Thomas Jefferson

Benjamin Franklin may have discovered electricity, but it was the man who invented the meter who made the money. – Earl Wilson

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It's Tolerated Only for Race Horses and Fancy Women

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The difficult we do at once; the impossible takes a bit longer. – Inscription on the memorial to the SeaBees (U.S. naval construction battalions)

My father worked for the same firm for twelve years. They fired him. They replaced him with a tiny gadget this big. It does everything that my father does, only much better. The depressing thing is my mother ran out and bought one. – Woody Allen

It costs me a dollar to make my product, and I can sell all I care to make for four dollars apiece. You just can’t believe the profit there is in that three percent. – anonymous

Seek simplicity and distrust it. – Alfred North Whitehead

Large increases in cost with questionable increases in performance can be tolerated only for race horses and fancy women. – William Thomson

Production is not the application of tools to materials, but logic to work. – Peter Drucker

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What do Inflation, Bureaucracy and Dandruff Have in Common

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A committee is a cul-de-sac down which ideas are lured and then quietly strangled. – Sir Barnett Cocks

If a government commission had worked on the horse, you would have had the first horse who could operate his knee joint in both directions. The only trouble would have been that he couldn’t stand up. – Peter Drucker

Committee – a group of men who keep minutes and waste hours. – Milton Berle

Things there are no solutions to: inflation, bureaucracy, and dandruff. – Malcolm Forbes

It is the anonymous “they,” the enigmatic “they,” who are in charge. Who is “they”? I don’t know. Nobody knows. Not even “they” themselves. – Joseph Heller

If you build up a business big enough it’s respectable. – Will Rogers

The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is its inefficiency. - Eugene McCarthy

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How Failure Can Lead to Success

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Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction. – Ernst F. Schumacher

Who dares to teach must never cease to learn. – John Cotton Dana

Every man is a damn fool for at least five minutes every day; wisdom consists in not exceeding the limit. – Elbert Hubbard

When a subject becomes totally obsolete we make it a required course. – Peter Drucker

The real villain of the oil crisis is the Harvard Business School – almost every Arab sheik now in charge of his country’s oil policy was trained at Harvard. – Art Buchwald

There are three ingredients in the good life: learning, earning, and yearning. – Christopher Morley

Never insult an alligator until you’ve crossed the river. – Cordell Hull

Failure is success if we learn from it. – Malcolm Forbes

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Where Wise Men Fear to Trade

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No nation was ever ruined by trade. – Benjamin Franklin

Fools rush in where wise men fear to trade. – Peter Drucker

Interdependence re-creates the world in the image of a global village. – Marshall McLuhan

The Chinese use two brush strokes to write the word “crisis.” One brush stroke stands for danger; the other for opportunity. In a crisis, beward of danger – but recognize the opportunity. – Richard M. Nixon

Nachman’s Rule: when it comes to foreign food the less authentic the better. – Gerald Nachman

Mass transport is doomed to failure in North America because a person’s car is the only place where he can be alone and think. – Marshall McLuhan

The dollar has become like a hydrant at an international convention for dogs. – Eliot Janeway