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Perhaps the most extraordinary characteristic of current America is the attempt to reduce life to buying and selling. Life is not love unless love is sex and bought and sold. Life is not knowledge save knowledge of technique, of science for destruction. Life is not beauty except beauty for sale. Life is not art unless its price is high and it is sold for profit. All life is production for profit, and for what is profit but for buying and selling again?
W. E. B. Du BoisAnd were in the middle of a perfect storm. These days, government social services are being bad-mouthed and defunded. The non-profit world is looking more and more like the for-profit world. The growing gap between rich and poor makes most of us very anxious about where we stand.
Arlie Russell HochschildArtists are just entrepreneurs. It's up to them to figure out how or if they can make a monetary profit from their passion โ from their calling, as I discussed above. Sometimes they can. Musicians can sell music, even in the face of piracy. Or they can sell their services โ concerts, etc. Painters and other artists can profit in similar ways. A novelist could use kickstarter for a sequel or get paid to consult on a movie version.
Stephan KinsellaWe can ill afford to have activities conducted as "non-profit," that is, as activities that devour capital rather than form it, if they can be organized as activities that form capital, as activities that make a profit.
Peter DruckerMy understanding from talking to a lot of people in the business has been that it used to be that a newspaper was considered a community service. Now they're being run as profit centers, and they're trying to get pretty high profit margins. As a result, investigative reporting has been seen as a problem.
Craig NewmarkThe reformer has enemies in all who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new order.
Niccolo MachiavelliFor a long time, the for-profit world has told us in the not-for-profit sector to behave more like businesses.
Nancy LublinI did precisely the wrong thing. The cotton showed me a loss and I kept it. The wheat showed me a profit and I sold it out. Of all the speculative blunders there are few greater than trying to average a losing game. Always sell what shows you a loss and keep what shows you a profit.
Jesse Lauriston LivermoreYou shouldn't be allowed to profit from the illegal proceeds, right? So if you're going to sell narcotics and sell illegal drugs in America, you also cannot profit from that.
Donald TrumpThe thing is, people can't complain about profit-oriented moves if they're only interested in profit themselves. You can't have it both ways. If they're willing to polish up a gift and sell it to make money, they can't really complain about the fact that somebody above them has sold them down the river. That's the way it goes.
Ian MacKayeThe UN is but a long-range, international banking apparatus clearly set up for financial and economic profit by a small group of powerful One-World revolutionaries, hungry for profit and power.
Curtis Bean DallThe fact that Trump's refused to divest from his labyrinth of business holdings, the fact that he's continuing to profit from his brand and indeed create all kinds of new opportunities to profit off the presidency is outrageous. The flip side is that he's left out a lot of levers through which to pressure him. You know, the reason you want a president to divest from his business holdings is that foreign governments can try to exert pressure on him by becoming customers of these hotels and inflating the value of how much they're willing to pay for a Trump brand.
Naomi KleinThe makers of fortunes have a second love of money as a creation of their own, resembling the affection of authors for their own poems, or of parents for their children, besides that natural love of it for the sake of use and profit.
PlatoWhen profits are pursued by geographic interchange of goods, so that commerce for profit becomes the central mechanism of the system, we usually call it "commercial capitalism." In such a system goods are conveyed from ares where they are more common (and therefore cheaper) to areas where they are less common (and therefore less cheap). This process leads to regional specialization and to division of labor, both in agricultural production and in handicrafts.
Carroll QuigleyIf a man, for private profit, tears at the public news, does so with the impatience of one who thinks he actually owns the news you get, it is against the national interest.
Jimmy BreslinIt was Lord Jesus Christ who said "Whosoever will save his life shall lose it, but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake shall save it. For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?"
Rama SwamiIf mankind is to profit freely from the small and sporadic crop of the heroically gifted it produces, it will have to cultivate the delicate art of handling ideas. Psychology is now able to tell us with reasonable assurance that the most influential obstacle to freedom of thought and to new ideas is fear; and fear which can with inimitable art disguise itself as caution, or sanity, or reasoned skepticism, or on occasion even as courage.
Wilfred TrotterOne metric catches people. We prefer businesses that drown in cash. An example of a different business is construction equipment. You work hard all year and there is your profit sitting in the yard. We avoid businesses like that. We prefer those that can write us a check at the end of the year.
Charlie MungerEvery woman has the instinct, the propensity to profit from her charms, and there's a lot to be said for giving oneself without love, without pleasure.
Leopold von Sacher-Masoch"Happy he that knows Thee, even if he knows nothing else," says St. Augustine. If we knew all the sciences and knew not how to love Jesus Christ, our knowledge shall profit us nothing to eternal life. But if we know how to love Jesus Christ, we shall know all things, and shall be happy for eternity.
Alphonsus LiguoriThe workers should take over the factories, and shut down Boeing's profit-making machine.
Kshama Sawant...free enterprise, [is] a term that refers, in practice, to a system of public subsidy and private profit, with massive government intervention in the economy to maintain a welfare state for the rich.
Noam ChomskyThe for-profit health insurance industry is the main obstacle to delivering high quality, universal healthcare for all. It should be replaced with a single-payer system, a public program that guarantees everyone coverage.
Kshama SawantFrom the Anarchist standpoint, these artificial hindrances which are the cause of three main forms of usury-interest, profit, and rent, are, in the order of their importance, monopoly in the control of the circulating medium-money and credit, private property in land not based on occupancy and use, patent rights and copyrights, and tariffs.
Laurance LabadieAlready nature is serving all those uses which science slowly derives on a much higher and grander scale to him that will be served by her. When the sunshine falls on the path of the poet, he enjoys all those pure benefits and pleasures which the arts slowly and partially realize from age to age. The winds which fan his cheek waft him the sum of that profit and happiness which their lagging inventions supply.
Henry David ThoreauWe've grown from 18% of the profits of the top 25 companies in our industry to 23% of the profits of the top 25 companies in our industry over the last five years. Profits are up over 70%, where the industry profit is up about 35%. Pretty good.
Steve BallmerAnd if I lost I would have gone back to 12 weeks of vacation, because I was successful enough that I was spending much more time on non-profit boards and traveling a lot.
John HickenlooperThere are two sure ways to fail: never get started and quit before you succeed. Many companies promote the language of risk-taking and innovation but are so concerned with short term profit goals that their culture discourages innovation (trying new things) and abandons promising projects too soon. It shouldn't require exceptional moral courage to try new things and stick with them.
Michael JosephsonThey say you never grow poor taking profits. No, you don't. But neither do you grow rich taking a four-point profit in a bull market. Where I should have made twenty thousand dollars I made two thousand. That was what conservatism did for me.
Jesse Lauriston LivermoreThe essence of a successful business is really quite simple. It is your ability to offer a product or service that people will pay for at a price sufficiently above your costs, ideally three or four or five times your cost, thereby giving you a profit that enables you to buy and to offer more products and services.
Brian TracyShareholders have the right and obligation to set the parameters of corporate behavior within which management pursues profit.
Eliot SpitzerEvery time I started a business and the people told me I was an idiot, I ended up making a lot of money. Si Redd used to say me, "Boy, you gotta be where they ain't." What that means is that you find areas of low competition because high competition means lower margins, and lower margins mean less profit. So we were always looking for places where we can be unique. If the thinking is out-of-the-box, people may not understand because they have not seen it before... Therefore you are an idiot.
Bob DavidsTrue art and true science possess two unmistakable marks: the first, an inward mark, which is this, that the servitor of art and science will fulfil his vocation, not for profit but with self- sacrifice; and the second, an external sign, his productions will be intelligible to all the people whose welfare he has in view.
Leo TolstoyThe ultimate cause of the October Crisis was the ideological embrace of Milton Friedman's warped but still dominant view that "the only social responsibility of business is to make a profit for its shareholders," and until that socially and economically counterproductive - and empirically, legally and ethically inaccurate - view is corrected, we will continue to have the increasing and more intense crises of global capitalism that we have seen recur with ever greater frequency over the past forty years. Sadly but clearly, the lessons have still not been learned.
Chip PittsThe corporation, like the psychopathic personality it resembles, is programmed to exploit others for profit.
Joel BakanNo one can sustain rage for long. I am still angry and always will be. My dear son was stolen from me and his family to never return. He was killed for profit and lies. How can I not be angry? Sometimes though, the rage comes back.
Cindy SheehanDo good under all circumstances, but with no care for any profit, or any blessedness, or any damnation, or any salvation, or any martyrdom; but all you do or omit should be for the honor of Love.
HadewijchWise men profit more from fools than fools from wise men; for the wise men shun the mistakes of fools, but fools do not imitate the successes of the wise.
Cato the ElderFor complex reasons, our culture allows "economy" to mean only "money economy." It equates success and even goodness with monetary profit because it lacks any other standard of measurement. I am no economist, but I venture to suggest that one of the laws of such an economy is that a farmer is worth more dead than alive. A second law is that anything diseased is more profitable than anything that is healthy. What is wrong with us contributes more to the "gross national product" than what is right with us.
Wendell BerryThe U.S. and European markets have become mature, profit margins are lower, and equipment isnt so new. Because profits are relatively low, it limits the willingness of companies to invest in newer equipment.
Zong QinghouSize of industry, concentration of market, or production notwithstanding, the consumer is best served when the businessman is completely free to pursue his profit goals.
John PugsleyI always had the old-school model that I'm going to work for as long as I'm relevant and focus on for-profit activities and someday when I retire I'm going to learn about philanthropy.
Marc AndreessenI smiled at the giant. โActually, Cacus, I have another secret weapon.โ The giantโs eyes lit up with greed. โAnother weapon? I will steal it! I will copy it and sell the knockoffs for a profit! What is this secret weapon?โ โHer name is Annabeth,โ I said. โAnd sheโs one of a kind.
Rick Riordan