The Businessman

Sunday, September 1, 2019 – The Businessman

The casualty list from the US-China trade war will include American consumers on Sunday when President Trump’s next round of tariffs on Chinese products takes effect, capping a month of contradictory policy announcements and second thoughts. Even as he braces for potential consumer irritation over higher prices, the president on Friday accused business executives who oppose his tariff strategy of blaming him for their own failures. ~ The Washington Post, Saturday, August 31, 2019

Informed decision-making comes from a long tradition of guessing and then blaming others for inadequate results. ~ Scott Adams

We as voters have long hoped that we would get a businessman instead of a politician in order to help fix America’s problems. Well, I am that businessman. ~ Herman Cain

The moment is ripe for an experienced businessman to talk practical, prudent economics to the electorate, which is why Mitt Romney’s political fortunes are steadily being resurrected from the grave. ~ Camille Paglia

There’s not a single day when I walk the streets of New York City when someone doesn’t come up to me to say: “Please, please, ask your dad to run for president.” We really need a businessman as leader of our country, not a politician. ~ Eric Trump

A lot of very successful businessmen share some of these sociopathic traits – a lack of empathy, seeing people as commodities, projecting an air of sincerity when everything is actually calculated. ~ Oscar Isaac

I find it rather easy to portray a businessman. Being bland, rather cruel and incompetent comes naturally to me. ~ John Cleese

Businessmen were not born chief executives. They were often people first. ~ Richard Jefferson

Few businessmen are capable of being in politics; they don’t understand the democratic process. They have neither the tolerance nor the depth it takes. Democracy isn’t a business. ~ Malcolm Forbes

For nearly four years you have had an Administration which instead of twirling its thumbs has rolled up its sleeves. We will keep our sleeves rolled up. We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace – business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering. They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

The interest of [businessmen] is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public… The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order ought never to be adopted, till after having been long and carefully examined with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men who have generally an interest to deceive and even oppress the public. ~ Adam Smith, An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations

Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate. ~ Bertrand Russell

Nothing is illegal if one hundred businessmen decide to do it. ~ Andrew Young

Business is a combination of war and sport. ~ Andre Maurois

Business, that’s easily defined. It’s other people’s money. ~ Peter Drucker

Corporation: An ingenious device for obtaining profit without individual responsibility. ~ Ambrose Bierce

A criminal is a person with predatory instincts who has not sufficient capital to form a corporation. ~ Howard Scott

We need to be clear when we venerate entrepreneurs what we are venerating. They are not moral leaders. If they were moral leaders, they wouldn’t be great businessmen. ~ Malcolm Gladwell

The man who is admired for the ingenuity of his larceny is almost always rediscovering some earlier form of fraud. The basic forms are all known, have all been practiced. The manners of capitalism improve. The morals may not. ~ John Kenneth Galbraith

What kind of society isn’t structured on greed? The problem of social organization is how to set up an arrangement under which greed will do the least harm; capitalism is that kind of a system. ~ Milton Friedman

Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wicked of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone. ~ John Maynard Keynes

A businessman is the only man who is forever apologizing for his occupation. ~ G. K. Chesterton

Little by little, the pimps have taken over the world. They don’t do anything, they don’t make anything – they just stand there and take their cut. ~ Jean Giradoux

To take something from a person and keep it for oneself: that is robbery. To take something from one person and then turn it over to another in exchange for as much money as you can get: that is business. Robbery is so much more stupid, since it is satisfied with a single, frequently dangerous profit; whereas in business it can be doubled without danger. ~ Octave Mirbeau

Criminals are never very amusing. It’s because they’re failures. Those who make real money aren’t counted as criminals. This is a class distinction, not an ethical problem. ~ Orson Welles

The “west”- what curse has fallen upon it that at the term of its trajectory it produces only these businessmen, these shopkeepers, these racketeers with their blank stares and atrophied smiles? Is it with such vermin as this that a civilization so delicate and so complex must come to an end? ~ Emil Cioran

I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime. Teach a man to create an artificial shortage of fish and he will eat steak. ~ Jay Leno

It is unfortunate we can’t buy many business executives for what they are worth and sell them for what they think they are worth. ~ Malcolm Forbes

The market has no morality ~ Michael Heseltine

Why is it that if you take advantage of a corporate tax break you’re a smart businessman, but if you take advantage of something so you don’t go hungry, you’re a moocher? ~ Jon Stewart

Businesspeople are like sharks, not just because we’re gray and slightly oily, or because our teeth trail the innards of those we have eviscerated, but because we must move forward or die. ~ Stanley Bing

Any man of reasonable intelligence can make money if that’s what he wants. Mostly it’s women or clothes or admiration he really wants and they deflect him. ~ John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent

If it was my business, I wouldn’t talk about it. It is very vulgar to talk about one’s business. Only people like stockbroker’s do that, and then merely at dinner parties. ~ Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

The last thing businessmen want to do is sit in a room filled with other businessmen. A room full of money is a pretty boring sight – unless it’s yours, of course. ~ Graydon Carter

In business, sir, one has no friends, only correspondents. ~ Alexandre Dumas

Business, you know, may bring money, but friendship hardly ever does. ~ Jane Austen, Emma

A businessman is a hybrid of a dancer and a calculator. ~ Paul Valery

Honesty is a good thing, but it is not profitable to its possessor unless it is kept under control. ~ Don Marquis

Honesty pays, but it doesn’t seem to pay enough to suit some people. ~ Kin Hubbard

It’s discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit. ~ Noel Coward

We have to distrust each other. It is our only defense against betrayal. ~ Tennessee Williams

Honest businessmen should be protected from the unscrupulous consumer. ~ Lester Maddox

Bank failures are caused by depositors who don’t deposit enough money to cover losses due to mismanagement. ~ Dan Quayle

Anti-intellectualism has long been the anti-Semitism of the businessman. ~ Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.

If you owe the bank $100, that’s your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that’s the bank’s problem. ~ J. Paul Getty

The meek shall inherit the Earth, but not its mineral rights. ~ J. Paul Getty

Employees make the best dates. You don’t have to pick them up and they’re always tax-deductible. ~ Andy Warhol

When in doubt, mumble; when in trouble, delegate; when in charge, ponder. ~ James H. Boren

In college, Yuppies major in business administration. If to meet certain requirements they have to take a liberal arts course, they take Business Poetry. ~ Dave Barry

We need business to understand its social responsibility, to understand that the main task and objective for a business is not to generate extra income and to become rich and transfer the money abroad, but to look and evaluate what a businessman has done for the country, for the people, on whose account he or she has become so rich. ~ Vladimir Putin