Advertising serves not so much to Advertise products as to promote consumption as a way of life. -- Carl Lash (?), 1978
Progress is our most important product. -- Advertising Slogan
The trouble with America isn't that the poetry of life has turned to prose, but that it has changed to Advertising copy. -- Mortimer B. Zuckerman
If the telephone company were to sell sushi, they would Advertise it as 'Cold, Dead Fish.'
Good products and services sell themselves, junk needs advertising.
You can tell the ideals of a nation by its advertisements. -- Norman Douglas
... [P]roduct is no more than an artifact around which customers have experiences. -- C.K. Prahalad and Venkatram Ramaswamy, Salon article
He who is known as an early riser need not get up until noon.
Legal, fun, or profitable - choose two.
Cheap, fast, or good - choose two.
Cheap prices are only cheap if your time has no value.
Certainly there are things in life that money can't buy, But it's very funny -- did you ever try buying them without money? -- Ogden Nash
Riches: A gift from Heaven signifying, "This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased." -- John D. Rockefeller, (slander by Ambrose Bierce)
A person who has nothing looks at all there is and wants something. A person who has something looks at all there is and wants all the rest.
When people are the underdog, they support measures that are fair to everyone; and when they're dominating, they support measures to keep themselves on top.
Honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty. -- Plato (?)
If you are smart enough to know that you're not smart enough to be an Engineer, then you're in Business.
Scientists are people who build the Brooklyn Bridge and then buy it. -- William Buckley (?)
Q: What's the difference between a used car salesman and a computer salesman?
A: The used car salesman knows when he's lying.
It's really the poor craftsman who blames his tools.
Lack of planning on your part doesn't consitute an emergency on my part.
Brooks' Law: Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.
There's a war out there, old friend. A world war. And it's not about who's got the most bullets. It's about who controls the information. What we see and hear, how we work, what we think... it's all about the information! -- Cosmo, Sneakers
Broadcast TV is not designed for you; it's designed for advertisers.
You do a commerical, you're off the artistic roll call forever. You're just another corporate shill, a whore at the capitalist gangbang. -- Bill Hicks
Risk takers by definition often fail, so too morons. In practice it is hard to tell the difference. -- Scott Adams
To say you got a vote of confidence would be to say you needed a vote of confidence. -- Andrew Young
And management means dealing with the personalities and disagreements of the team: management is mostly applied clinical psychology, which is not what you might have thought you were getting into. -- Donald Norman, Applying the Behavioral, Cognitive, and Social Sciences to Products
I was a securities analyst 70 years ago in London, so I can say that no financial man will ever understand business because financial people think a company makes money. A company makes shoes, and no financial man understands that. They think money is real. Shoes are real. Money is an end result. What is a business? The only function of a business is to create customer [value] and to innovate. -- Peter Drucker, Business 2.0 Interview
The economy depends about as much on economists as the weather does on weather forecasters. -- Jean-Paul Kauffmann
Knowledge must be made a crime. -- Alsee (regarding digital restrictions)
Innovation is the enemy of the establishment.
Meeting a person who wrote a masterpiece on the back of a deli menu would not surprise me. Meeting a person who wrote a masterpiece with a silver Cartier fountain pen on an antique writing table in an airy SoHo loft would SERIOUSLY surprise me. -- Hugh McLeod, How to be Creative
To take a significant step forward, you must make a series of finite improvements. -- Donald J. Atwood, General Motors The greatest force for improvement is resistance to change. -- Eli Goldratt
Change is inevitable, it's our job to exploit it.
Expansion means complexity; and complexity decay.
These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert to fleece the people, and now that they have got into a quarrel with themselves, we are called upon to appropriate the people's money to settle the quarrel. -- Abraham Lincoln, speech to Illinois legislature, Jan. 1837
One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important. -- Bertrand Russell
Take your work seriously but never take yourself seriously; and do not take what happens either to yourself or your work seriously. -- Booth Tarkington
If you want to know what god thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to. -- Dorthy Parker
Ikuno Oribe said, "If a retainer will just think about what he is to do for the day at hand, he will be able to do anything. If it is a single day's work, one should be able to put up with it. Tomorrow, too, is but a single day." -- Yamamoto Tsunetomo, The Book of the Samurai
Of course, there is great gain in godliness combined with contentment; for we brought nothing into the world, so that we can take nothing out of it; but if we have food and clothing, we will be content with these. But those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains. But as for you, man of God, shun all this; pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness. -- 1 Tim 6:7-11 NRSV
But besides the danger of a direct mixture of Religion & civil Government, there is an evil which ought to be guarded against in the indefinite accumulation of property from the capacity of holding it in perpetuity by ecclesiastical corporations. The power of all corporations, ought to be limited in this respect. The growing wealth acquired by them never fails to be a source of abuses. A warning on this subject is emphatically given in the example of the various Charitable establishments in G. B. [Great Britain] the management of which has been lately scrutinized. The excessive wealth of ecclesiastical Corporations and the misuse of it in many Countries of Europe has long been a topic of complaint. In some of them the Church has amassed half perhaps the property of the nation. When the reformation took place, an event promoted if not caused, by that disordered state of things, how enormous were the treasures of religious societies, and how gross the corruptions engendered by them; so enormous & so gross as to produce in the Cabinets & Councils of the Protestant states a disregard, of all the pleas of the interested party drawn from the sanctions of the law, and the sacredness of property held in religious trust. The history of England during the period of the reformation offers a sufficient illustration for the present purpose. -- James Madison, Detached Memoranda
It has indeed been a trying hour for the Republic; but I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war. God grant that my suspicions may prove groundless. -- Abraham Lincoln, letter to (Col.) William F. Elkins, Nov. 21, 1864
Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls, and looks like work. -- Thomas A. Edison
Honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty. -- Plato (?)
You want to know why I kept getting promoted? Because my mouth knows more than my brain. -- W.G.
When you don't know what to do, walk fast and look worried.
Work without a vision is slavery, Vision without work is a pipe dream, But vision with work is the hope of the world.
It is hard for the plain people to think about a thing, but easy for them to feel. Error, to hold their attention, must be visualized as a villain, and the villain must proceed swiftly to his inevitable retribution. They can understand that process; it is simple, usual, satisfying; it squares with their primitive conception of justice as a form of revenge.... [The average reader] is not at all responsive to purely intellectual argument, even when its theme is his own ultimate benefit.... But he is very responsive to emotional suggestion, particularly when it is crudely and violently made, and it is to this weakness that the newspapers must ever address their endeavors. In brief, they must try to arouse his horror, or indignation, or pity, or simply his lust for slaughter. Once they have done that, they have him safely by the nose. He will follow blindly until his emotion wears out. He will be ready to believe anything, however absurd, so long as he is in his state of psychic tumescence. -- H. L. Mencken, Newspaper Morals
Better stop short than fill to the brim.
Oversharpen the blade, and the edge will soon blunt.
Amass a store of gold and jade, and no one can protect it.
Claim wealth and titles, and disaster will follow.
Retire when the work is done.
This is the way of heaven.
-- Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching (9, trans. Gia-Fu Feng)