Big Corporations Quotes & Sayings

For millennia the two-million acre redwood ecosystem thrived and sheltered myriad species of life. In the last 150 years, 97 percent of the original redwood forests have been destroyed by timber corporations ... Big business cut-and-run logging operations have instilled a false dichotomy: jobs versus the environment. — Julia Hill

My wife noticed that I wrote really good complaint letters about faulty products and that I could get anything I wanted out of these big corporations, and she said that I was a good writer and that I should go to my dad and ask him for help. — Brian Herbert

Big business is not dangerous because it is big, but because its bigness is an unwholesome inflation created by privileges and exemptions which it ought not to enjoy. — Woodrow Wilson

Big Brother in the form of an increasingly powerful government and in an increasingly powerful private sector will pile the records high with reasons why privacy should give way to national security, to law and order [ ... ] and the like. — William O. Douglas

Today we live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups ... So I ask, in my writing, What is real? Because unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudo-realities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms. I do not distrust their motives; I distrust their power. They have a lot of it. And it is an astonishing power: that of creating whole universes, universes of the mind. I ought to know. I do the same thing. — Philip K. Dick

When I did big things, some large corporations like the Pennsylvania Railroad Company were behind me and responsible party. — Andrew Carnegie

If you mean by capitalism the God-given right of a few big corporations to make all the decisions that will affect millions of workers and consumers and to exclude everyone else from discussing and examining those decisions, then the unions are threatening capitalism. — Max Lerner

I am glad we have not yet been able to reach the stars or inhabitable planets that dance about them. For they would in all probability be owned and divided by corporations and framed by industrial interests. Better they rest in distant tranquility, apart from our manufactured chaos.
Let generations to come that learn to embrace one another, with their scientists, artists and poets, be the ones that immerse in that abundance and future. For now it is best it remains out of humanity's childlike hands in that big jar, light years away, marked "cookies." There for that coming time when the only thing we need feed off of, is the endless discovery and beauty. — Tom Althouse

Their attitude toward another aspect of organization shows the same bias. What of the "group life", the loss of individualism? Once upon a time it was conventional for young men to view the group life of the big corporations as one of its principal disadvantages. Today, they see it as a positive boon. Working with others, they believe, will reduce the frustration of work, and they often endow the accompanying suppression of ego with strong spiritual overtones. They will concede that there is often a good bit of wasted time in the committee way of life and that the handling of human relations involves much suffering of fools gladly. But this sort of thing, they say, is the heart of the organization man's job, not merely the disadvantages of it. "Any man who feels frustrated by these things," one young trainee with face unlined said to me, "can never be an executive". — William H. Whyte

The financial education taught in schools is funded and taught by the big banks and corporations. It's like having the cat train the mice. — Robert Kiyosaki

Big money and big business, corporations and commerce, are again the undisputed overlords of politics and government. The White House, the Congress and, increasingly, the judiciary, reflect their interests. We appear to have a government run by remote control from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers and the American Petroleum Institute. To hell with everyone else. — Bill Moyers

I'm still learning about music. The best way to learn is to listen to the audience. When you listen to the audience, they will tell you what they like. I wish these big corporations, instead of telling the audience what they should have, would listen. — Tony Bennett

Especially from the legal end of things, the easiest thing for a big corporation or lawyer to say is no. — Jeff Tremaine

The crush of lobbyists on Washington and purchase of the media by corporations has created a big business-run government and a worthless press leaving Americans screwed and ill-informed. — Adam McKay

This was yet another consequence of turning Wall Street partnerships into public corporations: It turned them into objects of speculation. It was no longer the social and economic relevance of a bank that rendered it too big to fail, but the number of side bets that had been made upon it. — Michael Lewis

What I love about what I get to do is that I'm allowed to create the stories that I want to tell with minimal interference by some very big corporations like Microsoft and Sprint and EA and BioWare. The advantage that these tech companies have is that they understand the space organically, versus traditional media companies. — Felicia Day

It's really tough for the small farmer to have a successful business. That is the big challenge - all the laws are designed for larger corporations. And that's going to be the challenge in this country; it goes beyond food. — Robert Kenner

A prime minister's job is to make sure the government works for those who have elected him, and not for big corporations. — Jack Layton

We must reign in overspending by ridding government of outmoded programs, making Big Oil pay their fair share, repealing massive tax breaks for corporations that ship jobs overseas, and enacting a tax code that no longer favors millionaires and billionaires. — Paul Tonko

Today the game is rigged - rigged to work for those who have money and power. Big corporations hire armies of lobbyists to get billion-dollar loopholes into the tax system and persuade their friends in Congress to support laws that keep the playing field tilted in their favor. Meanwhile, hardworking families are told that they'll just have to live with smaller dreams for their children. — Elizabeth Warren

Voting wouldn't excite me unless it included electing the directors of the big banks and corporations, who make the real decisions that affect our lives. It's hard to get excited about the trained seals in Washington. — Robert Anton Wilson

By not trying the small cases, the lawyers don't get the courtroom experience. So when the huge, bet-the-company cases come along, there are only a handful of trial lawyers who can handle it. That's why these big corporations still call us old-timers every day. — Joe Jamail

Women leading big corporations or assuming various important social and political roles is still considered newsworthy, which clearly shows the need to further support and enhance the role of women in society. — Guler Sabanci

While big corporations make huge, tax-free profits, taxes for the everyday working person skyrocket. While politicians take free trips around the world, those same politicians cut back food stamps for the poor. While politicians increase their salaries, millions of people are being laid off. This city is on the brink of bankruptcy, and yet hundreds of thousands of dollars are being spent on this trial. I do not understand a government so willing to spend millions of dollars on arms, to explore outer space, even the planet Jupiter, and at the same time close down day care centers and fire stations. — Assata Shakur

The problem with copyright enforcement is that when the parameters aren't incredibly well defined, it means big corporations, who have deeper pockets and better lawyers, can bully people. — Shepard Fairey

Orwell couldn't see that Big Brother would not be The State, but The Corporation. — Laurence Overmire

The big corporations and those who must compete with them are not concerned with a sense of harmony among plants, animals, and nature. — Peter Singer

When people say the word "convention," they are usually referring to large gatherings of the employees of companies and corporations who attend a mass assembly, usually in a big hotel somewhere, for the purpose of pretending to learn stuff when they are in fact enjoying a free trip somewhere, time off work, and the opportunity to flirt with strangers, drink, and otherwise indulge themselves. The first major difference between a business convention and a fan-dom convention is that fandom doesn't bother with the pretenses. They're just there to have a good time. The second difference is the dress code - the ensembles at a fan convention tend to be considerably more novel. — Jim Butcher

If you have a mental model that says big corporations are fundamentally greedy and selfish and exploitative, you don't really want to have an exception to that model. It's much easier to say, 'Yes, Whole Foods has been corrupted.' — John Mackey

The big corporation is not in the least remarkable for efficiency; it is only too big to be blamed for its inefficiency. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Populism is at its essence [ ... ] just determined focus on helping people be able to get out of the iron grip of the corporate power that is overwhelming our economy, our environment, energy, the media, government. [ ... ] One big difference between real populism and what the Tea Party thing is, is that real populists understand that government has become a subsidiary of corporations. So you can't say, let's get rid of government. You need to be saying let's take over government. — Jim Hightower

There was no such thing as just doing what was right anymore. It was a tightrope walk few understood. "National interests" were really corporate interests. Immigration was really about cheap labor for multinational corporations. America's Middle East policy was about cheap oil so that Big Oil could expand their reach and influence without the weak US economy imploding. — William Struse

As long as there are big corporations, there will be big unions. The economic power of big business will be matched by the economic power of the big unions. — Margaret Chase Smith

Software patents, in particular, are very ripe for abuse. The whole system encourages big corporations getting thousands and thousands of patents. Individuals almost never get them. — Linus Torvalds

The way that a handful of corporations in Los Angeles dictate how our stories are told creates a real poverty of imagination and it's a big problem. — Alex Cox

I don't trust this [american] government to be regulating corporations. I trust big business to be regulated [by itself] and to be a party to a decent solution. — Ezra Klein

Governments have been ceding power to big multinational corporations in the market. We see the manifest in a variety of ways. Where governments are giving up power to big international institutions like the World Trade Organization or NAFTA, which are disabling governments' ability to protect the rights of their own people. — Noreena Hertz

We line up and make a lot of noise about big environmental problems like incinerators, waste dumps, acid rain, global warming and pollution. But we don't understand that when we add up all the tiny environmental problems each of us creates, we end up with those big environmental dilemmas. Humans are content to blame someone else, like government or corporations, for the messes we create, and yet we each continue doing the same things, day in and day out, that have created the problems. Sure, corporations create pollution. If they do, don't buy their products. If you have to buy their products (gasoline for example), keep it to a minimum. Sure, municipal waste incinerators pollute the air. Stop throwing trash away. Minimize your production of waste. Recycle. Buy food in bulk and avoid packaging waste. Simplify. Turn off your TV. Grow your own food. Make compost. Plant a garden. Be part of the solution, not part of the problem. If you don't, who will? — Joseph Jenkins

The big corporations are suddenly taking notice of the web, and their reactions have been slow. Even the computer industry failed to see the importance of the Internet, but that's not saying much. Let's face it, the computer industry failed to see that the century would end. — Douglas Adams

If both parents must work, I think it is more important that the mother has proximity to the child to therefore establish a childcare situation at the big corporations not once a day, but many times a day. — Eric Braeden

It was getting harder, however. American magazines still looked shiny and lively, but by the early 1960s, writers like Flora were sensing trouble. With television's exploding popularity, more and more people were staring at screens instead of turning pages. Big corporations like car manufacturers were pulling their advertising dollars out of print and spending them on the airwaves. Magazines were bleeding ad pages and readers, and editors scrambled to balance budgets by retooling audiences. — Debbie Nathan

Our aim is not to do away with corporations; on the contrary, these big aggregations are an inevitable development of modern industrialism, and the effort to destroy them would be futile unless accomplished in ways that would work the utmost mischief to the entire body politic. We can do nothing of good in the way of regulating and supervising these corporations until we fix clearly in our minds that we are not attacking the corporations, but endeavoring to do away with any evil in them. We are not hostile to them; we are merely determined that they shall be so handled as to subserve the public good. We draw the line against misconduct, not against wealth. — Theodore Roosevelt

Big oil, big steel, big agriculture avoid the open marketplace. Big corporations fix prices among themselves and thus drive out of business the small entrepreneur. Also, in their conglomerate form, the huge corporations have begun to challenge the very legitimacy of the state. — Gore Vidal

The mass media. What are they? They're huge corporations, massive corporations, linked up with even bigger corporations. They sell audiences to other businesses, namely advertisers. So when you turn on the television set, CBS doesn't make any money. They make money from the advertisers. You're the product that they're selling, and the same is true of the daily newspaper. They're huge corporations, selling audiences, potential consumers, to other businesses, all linked up closely to the government, especially the big media. What picture of the world do you expect them to present? — Noam Chomsky

We live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups. I ask, in my writing, 'What is real?' Because unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudo realities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms. — Philip K. Dick

Big corporations have money and power to make sure every rule breaks their way; people have voices and votes to push back. — Elizabeth Warren

All the big corporations depreciate their possessions, and you can, too, provided you use them for business purposes. For example, if you subscribe to the Wall Street Journal, a business-related newspaper, you can deduct the cost of your house, because, in the words of U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger in a landmark 1979 tax decision: Where else are you going to read the paper? Outside? What if it rains? — Dave Barry

The people who are thinking most about big data right now are corporations and governments. — Rick Smolan

People on corporate conveyor belts, like animals in slaughter-chutes are all part of the same big massacre of joy. — Bryant McGill

Big corporations aren't always the bad guys; but it's the sensible way to bet. — Simon R. Green

Why do we still cling to the intellectually retarded notion that liberty can be obtained, maintained, or lost at the end of a gun barrel? When you're working 3 minimum wage jobs to make the minimum payment on a pair of socks you bought 12 years ago because your credit card company slapped you with an interest rate that would make a loan shark holler WTF! ... well, no one needs to hold a gun to your head. Your ass has already been sold down the river. — Quentin R. Bufogle

Why help make big companies bigger when you can get the same thing from the little guy and actually help someone accomplish their dream? — Trevor D. Richardson

The terms of the political debate must be redefined to focus clearly on the real issue: the contest for power between the big and central and the small and local--between corporations and ordinary people. The time is ripe for a realignment of political alliances, which is likely to come into full flower only when the true populists realize that their enemy is not only big government but also the giant corporations that owe no allegiance to place, people, or human interest. — David Korten

We're headed towards a fascist economy in which you have big government, big corporations and big labor, and they're all in cahoots to strangle the entrepreneur. — Wayne Rogers

If we stuck to the Constitution as written, we would have: no federal meddling in our schools; no Federal Reserve; no U.S. membership in the UN; no gun control; and no foreign aid. We would have no welfare for big corporations, or the "poor"; no American troops in 100 foreign countries; no NAFTA, GAT, or "fast-track"; no arrogant federal judges usurping states rights; no attacks on private property; no income tax. We could get rid of most of the agencies, and most of the budget. The government would be small, frugal, and limited. — Ron Paul

Average working people need more fresh starts. Big corporations, banks, and Donald Trump need fewer. — Robert Reich

What they are planning for us; sex, religion, money in the New World Order. Which is more corrupt? The liberal media or the multi-national corporations? Why truly big money wants your children to try drugs, even while they campaign to discourage these evils. How the brilliant scientists have come up with the proven methods to destroy your family. All you have to do is let your guard down. — Hans Von Seeckt

Corporations wield enormous power in society.In order to see lasting social change, leaders in the private sector must begin to think of their own business plans as plans for good as well as profit. That's not such a big leap. — Darren Walker

Everybody has someone in their life that has breast cancer. It touches femininity, motherhood and sexuality and as Barbara Brenner says in the film, "you get to say breast out loud in public." Big corporations know this and market in a particular way knowing that women make most of the buying decisions in a household. — Leanne Pooley

I was a lawyer for 10 years - a short time, but it molded me into who I am. My clients were little people fighting big corporations, so it was a natural thing to not only represent the little guy but also to pull for him - it's the American way. — John Grisham

Spirituality has to play an important role, particularly in resistance movements. The institutions we are fighting against - corporations and governments - use alienation as one of their primary weapons. A big part of their messaging is intended to make people feel separated from each other, which disempowers them, which makes them ever easier to exploit. This is really a spiritual weapon they are using. It isolates people and breaks their spirit. — Tim DeChristopher

A big corporation is more or less blamed for being big; it is only big because it gives service. If it doesn't give service, it gets small faster than it grew big. — William S. Knudsen

When I first came to NBC, I thought it was going to be swimming with the sharks, all men for themselves, be careful and all that. I have to tell you I learned that you can be kind and a hard worker and move up. You don't have to play dirty or do things that you think happens at big corporations. — Hoda Kotb

Labour has to deal with the fact that the old working class doesn't exist anymore. The working class has become the middle class. And this middle class is very much prepared to support anyone who has genuinely fallen on hard times but have no sympathy with anyone abusing the system: be it those on welfare, politicians or big corporations. — Brahim Gur

We live in an adolescent society, Neverland, where never growing up seems more the norm than the exception. Little boys wearing expensive suits and adult bodies should not be allowed to run big corporations. They shouldn't be allowed to run governments, armies, religions, small businesses and charities either and just quietly, they make pretty shabby husbands and fathers too. Mankind has become Pankind and whilst "lost boys" abound, there is also an alarming increase in the number of "lost girls. — Daniel Prokop

The big corporations and the big companies turned musicians into factory workers on an assembly line. — Ray Davies

Interest-rate swaps are a tool used by big cities, major corporations and sovereign governments to manage their debt, and the scale of their use is almost unimaginably massive. It's about a $379 trillion market, meaning that any manipulation would affect a pile of assets about 100 times the size of the United States federal budget. — Matt Taibbi

The advent of digitally enhancing images - and the fact that actresses weren't protesting against that - created an environment where big corporations felt like they had total ownership over the bodies of actresses. — Romola Garai

What's interesting is that most free-marketers don't seem to want a free market at all, but a status quo market. The market in the United States is anything but free. If it were, big business would have to survive without corporate welfare to the tune of about $1 trillion (that's trillion) in government subsidies, the majority of which, about $650 billion, go to the fossil fuel industry! They are living off of the public dole on subsidies totaling billions of dollar - that we hand out either directly, or through tax breaks for their big corporations - with the false assumption that they are creating jobs. They are not. They are creating yachts, Leer Jets, and McMansions with swimming pools. — Steve Bivans

Obviously we're a consumer nation and you have the power to influence these big corporations who are running the world right now through what you chose to, or not to, purchase. — Daryl Hannah

The bigger issue, was the whole takeover of the food industry by big corporations. — Jerry Garcia

Blaming the running injury epidemic on big, bad Nike seems too easy - but that's okay, because it's largely their fault. — Christopher McDougall

Talking about corporations - they're so big. There's not a person at a corporation. — Greg Kinnear

New Yorkers have been fortunate to have Andrew Cuomo as our Attorney General - protecting working New Yorkers against the banks, insurance companies and big corporations. — Eric Schneiderman

Reasons why members of Congress deserve a pay raise: Many big corporations are cutting back on bribes; nearly half the members have never been indicted. — David Letterman

One thing that pisses me off royally is hearing drug companies denounced as the devil. I don't like giant corporations (or, in the words of Spalding Gray, "the big indifferent machine") any more than anyone else, but I really don't like wanting to kill myself. A person who denounces psychopharmaceuticals based on a political agenda is a person who has never lain crumpled in a ball in the closet, sobbing uncontrollably, face covered in Sharpie, throat raw from induced vomiting. Accordingly, that person should be thankful and shut the hell up. — Stacy Pershall

I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of "Admin." The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern."
[From the Preface] — C.S. Lewis

There is a lot of talk about "rigged games" as of late. Big government is the most insipid of all "rigged games". There is no choice available to the public allowing it to avoid a big over-arching government. You can always chose not do business with a big corporation. Corporations that are distasteful can be avoided. A big, powerful, government bent on intrusion cannot be avoided. — A.E. Samaan

The corporations who invest in lobbyists, it pays in terms of tax loopholes, tax subsidies, all the rest. It pays. Clearly, the money has a big effect. — Mark Shields

I think Donald Trump is moving to - and will continue to move to the economic argument, as to why what he's doing is - represents a commitment to stand up to big business, to international corporations who favor more immigration and lower wages - that's what they favor - and a defense of the interest of the American people who go to work every day. — Jeff Sessions

The Clone Wars were yet another thing to be upset about. Everything about that conflict had been a lie. The Separatists had been this big enemy, and yet when the Empire was declared they'd melted away as if at the push of a button. The big corporations had staged the whole thing, Skelly was sure. Wars sold more ships, more weapons, and more medical devices. And in the Clone Wars, even the soldiers on both sides were manufactured goods. — John Jackson Miller

Capitalism defines a profit-driven empire, not one that is driven to benefit the goodwill of its citizens by placing their needs and security first. Not only that, people have plutocracy confused with democracy. A true democratic society is supposed to serve its people, not big businesses. The welfare of its citizens, not corporate pockets. But when you have corporations buying the seats of our political leaders, who do you think they will serve? — Suzy Kassem

The big guys who ran things didn't want you thinking or feeling. It slowed down production. They wanted you scared and working so you wouldn't bump up against the truth
life could be fun. Yup, they wanted you scared. They wanted you grim. They wanted you madly cranking out Barbie dolls or Post Toasties or Xerox, or they wanted you overworked and underpaid at teaching so you could at least feel smart, and they wanted you to keep having kids so you'd have to keep working at whatever job you were stuck in and not have time to think or feel or, if you did, you certainly wouldn't have time to do anything about it, or even get close to the big fun, the fun that belonged only to them. And then they wanted your kids to hop on the same treadmill. — Bill Ripley

Candidly, I believe most corporations actually don't mind big government. — Rick Santorum

The thing that really struck me was how many firms that we think of as strictly civilian had ties to the Pentagon. Companies like Apple, Starbucks, Oakley the sunglasses manufacturer. Even Google, and a lot of big corporations like PepsiCo, Colgate-Palmolive, and Nestle, that you don't normally think of as defense contractors. — Nick Turse

The willingness to hear hard truth is vital not only for CEOs of big corporations but also for anyone who loves the truth. Sometimes the truth sounds like bad news, but it is just what we need. — Bill Gates

If it were not for government regulation of big corporations, executives at companies like Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, they could have cheated investors out of millions. — P. J. O'Rourke

He's as bad as my mother. Maybe worse. He's a market-research consultant. He studies people's facial expressions to see how they feel about commercials and products. He used to be a psychologist but he makes more money helping big corporations dupe the public. The worst part is he can look at your face and say 'Your upper lip just twitched! Anger! You're angry. Don't try to hide it from me, young man. Why does it make you angry when I say those pants make you look like a girl? Doe you have something against girls? Perhaps some unresolved Oedipal feelings? — Natalie Standiford

I know what it's like to have these big multinational corporations invade your land and promise jobs and promise it's gonna be safe, and then you see the consequences. — Mark Ruffalo

Populism is not a style, it's a people's rebellion against the iron grip that big corporations have on our country - including our economy, government, media, and environment. — Jim Hightower

Republicans have been very successful. There are three things Americans don't like: big unions, big government and big corporations. So Republicans go after big government and big unions, and only talk about small businesses. — Andy Stern

When I speak out against the guns or against the big corporations, some of my friends say, 'Oh Yoko, be careful. These people have all the power.' But, you know, most people don't speak out because they are frightened. — Yoko Ono

if you think the corporations are evil and it's the government's job to make them moral, you're deflecting your own responsibility to civics. You're making the government your big brother and the corporation the evil bully your big brother's supposed to keep off you at recess. — David Foster Wallace

Therefore a simple and poor society can exist as a democracy on a basis of sheer individualism. But a rich and complex industrial society cannot so exist; for some individuals, and especially those artificial individuals called corporations, become so very big that the ordinary individual is utterly dwarfed beside them, and cannot deal with them on terms of equality. It therefore becomes necessary for these ordinary individuals to combine in their turn, first in order to act in their collective capacity through that biggest of all combinations called the Government, and second, to act, also in their own self-defense, through private combinations, such as farmers' associations and trade unions. — Theodore Roosevelt

Look for a candidate who can do to the electorate what corporations are learning to do, so Government - or, better, Big Government, Big Brother, Intrusive Government - becomes the image against which this candidate defines himself. Though — David Foster Wallace

If the level and amount of consumption and waste of the western rich countries ever reaches the poor countries, it will mean the end of humanity. The big world corporations are busy doing it ... The production, selling, consumption, accumulation, wastes' and advertisement explosions in the western rich countries and the continued population explosion in the poor countries will turn into major catastrophes. — Robert Muller

You know that big government doesn't hurt big corporations. They've got the best lawyers and accountants in the world. You know who gets destroyed by big government? It's the little guys. — Marco Rubio

Key is the question of where do new ideas come from. Historically, four places: government labs, big corporations, startup companies, and research universities. — Nicholas Negroponte

Everybody gets ticked off about GE paying no taxes. Look, we have a complicated, convoluted tax system. And only big corporations and wealthy individuals like Warren Buffett can take advantage of it. We need to simplify and flatten the code, get rid of all the loopholes. — Joe Walsh

Large corporations and unions know the power of being big enough to bargain for better rates. — Greg Walden