Business They Are Going Quotes & Sayings

When you focus on lack and scarcity and what you don't have, you fuss about it with your family, you discuss it with your friends, you tell your children that you don't have enough - "We don't have enough for that, we can't afford that" - then you'll never be able to afford it, because you begin to attract more of what you don't have. If you want abundance, if you want prosperity, then focus on abundance. Focus on prosperity. (Lisa Nichols)
Many people in Western culture are striving for success. They want the great home, they want their business to work, they want all these outer things. But what we found in our research is that having these outer things does not necessarily guarantee what we really want, which is happiness. So we go for these outer things thinking they're going to bring us happiness , but it's backward. You need to go for the inner joy, the inner peace, the inner vision first, and then all of the outer things appear. (Marci Shimoff)
— Rhonda Byrne

Conflicts often stem from a couple of leaders on both sides that are badly brought up. They'd rather go to war than compromise. And in business, you're competing with other companies all the time, but you don't end up going to war with each other. — Richard Branson

We have been spending beyond our means, we are going to focus on the projects that we committed to in the election but importantly if there is additional projects or new things that come up they have to have a business case, they have to work and they can't impose financial stress on families and private individuals and businesses. — Campbell Newman

Shit, man, democracy failed before it started.

Who thought it was a good idea to let the masses of fucktards decide anything?

[Guess I've got more faith in people.]

People? The election of 2044 -- Curls Bellberry, a boy band presidency on the platform that the Earth is flat and that he'd nuke New York to save Social Security. There's a good reason he was the last president.

Problem with letting people pick a leader is they gravitate towards confident sociopaths no matter how stupid they are.

It's the perception of qualification that fools people.

At least by having corporate executives rule us we get folks who are good at business.

Life hurts, the world is fucked, and that's not going to change. . . — Rick Remender

In addition, the long shadow of the Holocaust in which 6 million Jews perished - going, as the younger generation in Israel is constantly reminded, 'like lambs to the slaughter' - touches every family in the new homeland. Pride in being Jewish and determination to prove that never again will they let their defences down has its effect upon everybody in the service, from the youngest recruit to the most experienced veteran. For such reasons, the men and women of the Israeli intelligence community are more dedicated than their equally patriotic colleagues who work in the same line of business in other countries on behalf of the CIA, KGB or MI6. The — Ronald Payne

War is big business. It's a lot of money going to and fro, and unfortunately a lot of angst, and a lot of fear, and a lot of doubt. And eventually a lot of wonderful people, like soldiers, like men and women that are out there trying to do the best they can, they come back being wounded on many levels. — Jon Anderson

A concrete example of this mechanism is found in one of the most alarming phenomena of the last thirty years: the enormous increase in the police force of all countries. The increase of population has inevitably rendered it necessary. However accustomed we may be to it, the terrible paradox should not escape our minds that the population of a great modern city, in order to move about peaceably and attend to its business, necessarily requires a police force to regulate the circulation. But it is foolishness for the party of "law and order" to imagine that these "forces of public authority" created to preserve order are always going to be content to preserve the order that that party desires. Inevitably they will end by themselves defining and deciding on the order they are going to impose- which, naturally, will be that which suits them best. — Ortega Y Gasset

You're talking to investors - and investors, they look at you and they realize, you know, not every business they invest in are the founders or the people running it going to have every bit of skill - and I think they looked at me and realized, OK, this is a guy who's got a lot - I'm much older than the usual run of people they fund. — David Plotz

You can look at the cost structure of an incumbent company and discover: where are they not going to be able to drop their prices ... because that business model is fundamental to the existence of the company. — Aaron Levie

Ugh, puppy mills. These commercial breeding facilities are horrendous. The animals are kept in tiny wire cages, with little to no human interaction throughout their lives. They are rarely, if ever, seen medically and are forced to breed over and over again and watch as their babies are taken away from them and sold to pet stores. It is a supply-and-demand business, so the more people stop going to pet stores and choose to adopt instead, the quicker we can put an end to these puppy mills. — Beth Ostrosky Stern

Too many people learn about war with no inconvenience to themselves. They read about Verdun or Stalingrad without comprehension, sitting in a comfortable armchair, with their feet beside the fire, preparing to go about their business the next day, as usual.
One should really read such accounts under compulsion, in discomfort, considering oneself fortunate not to be describing the events in a letter home, writing from a hole in the mud. One should read about war in the worst circumstances, when everything is going badly, remembering that the torments of peace are trivial, and not worth any white hairs. Nothing is really serious in the tranquility of peace; only an idiot could be really disturbed by a question of salary.
One should read about war standing up, late at night, when one is tired, as I am writing about it now, at dawn, while my asthma attack wears off. And even now, in my sleepless exhaustion, how gentle and easy peace seems! — Guy Sajer

You know, I really miss sex scandals. They're generally colorful. They almost never mean anything over the long run. And while they're going on, the people who actually keep the government running are let alone to go about their business. Good old sex scandals. — Gail Collins

In the retail business, many people are too consumed with the bottom line. How much am I going to be selling? Am I going to be able to do all the things I need to get done? Instead, if they are at peace and feeling good about themselves - if they are treating customers with love and acting as statesmen and stateswomen and people who are connected to God in a spiritual sense - then every day for them is a real joy. — Wayne Dyer

Knitting is something you can do, even when your heart is going like a trip-hammer and the pit of your stomach feels all gone and your thoughts are catawampus. Then when I see the headlines, be they good or be they bad, I calm down and am able to go about my business again. — L.M. Montgomery

I try to encourage people to really love what they do, like when it's about being a part of this business [entertaining], love what you do because it's not going to always be defined by who you are. It's going to be a lot of times your good name walks in the door before you do. — Cedric The Entertainer

Walls keep you from seeing things. They help make things less real. Sure, maybe you hear loud, sharp noises outside some nights. But it's easy to tell yourself that those aren't gunshots, that there's no need to call the police, no need to even worry. It's probably just a car backfiring. Sure. Or a kid with fireworks. There might be loud wailing or screams coming from the apartment upstairs, but you don't know that the drunken neighbor is beating his wife with a rolling pin again. It's not really any of your business, and they're always fighting, and the man is scary, besides. Yeah, you know that there are cars coming and going at all hours from your neighbor's place, and that the crowd there isn't exactly the most upright-looking bunch, but you haven't seen him dealing drugs. Not even to the kids you see going over there sometimes. It's easier and safer to shut the door, be quiet, and turn up the TV.
We're ostriches and the whole world is sand. — Jim Butcher

The rest of the world cares about how we conduct our affairs because they then take that lead. We're the only leader in the world today. Some are wishing us well, others think that we're down and are not going to get back up again, but they are all watching with great interest to see how we conduct our business over the next couple of years. — Jon Huntsman Jr.

You don't like the Goths?"
"No! Not with the persecution we have to put up with!"
"Persecution?"
"Religious persecution. We won't stand for it forever."
"I thought the Goths let everybody worship as they pleased."
"That's just it! We Orthodox are forced to stand around and watch Arians and Monophysites and Nestorians and Jews going about their business unmolested, as if they owned the country. If that isn't persecution, I'd like to know what is! — L. Sprague De Camp

We must limit the running to and fro which most men practise, rambling about houses, theatres, and marketplaces. They mind other men's business, and always seem as though they themselves had something to do. If you ask one of them as he comes out of his own door, "Whither are you going?" he will answer, "By Hercules, I do not know: but I shall see some people and do something." They wander purposelessly seeking for something to do, and do, not what they have made up their minds to do, but what has casually fallen in their way. They move uselessly and without any plan, just like ants crawling over bushes, which creep up to the top and then down to the bottom again without gaining anything. Many men spend their lives in exactly the same fashion, which one may call a state of restless indolence. — Seneca.

Living in Venice, it's hard to determine the real parody of inhumanity. On the one hand, there are the homeless hordes, a teaming mass of virtual zombies swelling the streets whose daily business amounts to ruffling through trash, pissing on corners and chasing pets. On the other hand, there is the endless stream of bourgeois stiffs coming and going from home, restaurants and shops. They are zombies in their own right who pretend the homeless don't exist. — Ryan Hyatt

The orange turns to dull bronze light and continues to show what it has shown all day long, but now it seems to show it without enthusiasm. Across those dry hills, within those little houses in the distance are people who've been there all day long, going about the business of the day, who now find nothing unusual or different in this strange darkening landscape, as we do. If we were to come upon them early in the day they might be curious about us and what we're here for. but now in the evening they'd just resent our presence. The workday is over. It's time for supper and family and relaxation and turning inward at home. We ride unnoticed down this empty highway through this strange country I've never seen before, and now a heavy feeling of isolation and loneliness becomes dominant and my spirits wane with the sun. — Robert M. Pirsig

Teenage girls these days are more and more getting lured into thinking they should dumb themselves down, and that's going to attract the wrong kind of guy, and it's serious. It's serious business. — Danica McKellar

I'm with you on measuring this week in letters and the two-day drought we are about to experience. If only there was a way to transport letters faster, through some sort of electronic device that codes messages and sends them through the air. But that's just crazy talk.

Friday from me:

Sending letters through the sky? Like when airplanes attach notes to their tails? I thought they only advertised for going-out-of-business sales. But perhaps our letters would be okay up there as well. I wonder how much they charge per word. — Kasie West

And so many of the indies have partnered with Google to sell ebooks right from their own websites. These stores are embracing the "new technology" instead of hiding from it, because they realize it's about the story, not the ink on paper. If you want ebooks, your local indie can sell you ebooks. If your local independent is hanging up posters saying that ebooks will kill everything, you should tag that bookstore as a favorite in your GPS doohickey. You'll get great deals, because that store will have a going-out-of-business sale soon. Yes, even though you try to save it with a letter-writing campaign. — Steve Weddle

Wizards don't believe in gods in the same way that most people don't find it necessary to believe in, say, tables. They know they're there, they know they're there for a purpose, they'd probably agree that they have a place in a well-organised universe, but they wouldn't see the point of believing, of going around saying "O great table, without whom we are as naught." Anyway, either the gods are there whether you believe in them or not, or exist only as a function of the belief, so either way you might as well ignore the whole business and, as it were, eat off your knees. — Terry Pratchett

For the existing enterprise, whether business or public-service institution, the controlling word in the term 'entrepreneurial management' is 'entrepreneurial'. For the new venture, it is 'management'. In the existing business, it is the existing that is the main obstacle to entrepreneurship. In the new venture, it is its absence. The new venture has an idea. It may have a product or a service. It may even have sales, and sometimes quite a substantial volume of them. It surely has costs. And it may have revenues and even profits. What it does not have is a 'business', a viable, operating, organized 'present' in which people know where they are going, what they are supposed to do, and what the results are or should be. But unless a new venture develops into a new business and makes sure of being 'managed', it will not survive no matter how brilliant the entrepreneurial idea, how much money it attracts, how good its products, nor even how great the demand for them. — Peter F. Drucker

What you have felt and thought will by itself invent a new style, so that when people talk about style they are always a little astonished at the newness of it, because they think that it is only style that they are talking about, when what they are talking about is the attempt to express a new idea with such force that it will have the originality of the thought.It is an awfully lonesome business, and, as you know, I never wanted you to go into it, but if you are going into it at all, I want you to go into it knowing the sort of things that took me years to learn. — F Scott Fitzgerald

For example, when Christians discuss sex, it often sounds as if we are somehow "against sex". What we fail to make clear is that sexual passion (the good gifts of God's creation) is now subservient to the demanding business of maintaining a revolutionary community in a world that often uses sex as a means of momentarily anesthetizing or distracting people from the basic vacuity of their lives. When the only contemporary means of self-transcendence is orgasm, we Christians are going to have a tough time convincing people that it would be nicer if they were not promiscuous. — Stanley Hauerwas

Questions about her feelings, about what has been or might be going on in her soul are non of my business; they are the business of her conscience and belong to religion. — Leo Tolstoy

I hate to lose, and if anybody gets used to losing they are going to be a loser. I'd like to tell you losing is part of the game, and it is, but I hated it. I still hate to lose. And that will never change. By the way, just because I turned the page and poured all my energies into business does not mean that I don't miss organized sports. I do. — Donald Trump

Natural resources are so vast that no single individual or business is going to protect them; they don't have an incentive to. — William Weld

He whistled, and Mrs. O'Leary bounded after him to the far end of the grove. Leneus huffed indignantly and brushed the twigs off his shirt. "Now, as I was trying to explain, young lady, your boyfriend has not sent any reports since we voted him into exile." "You tried to vote him into exile," I corrected. "Chiron and Dionysus stopped you." "Bah! They are honorary Council members. It wasn't a proper vote." "I'll tell Dionysus you said that." Leneus paled. "I only meant ... Now see here, Jackson. This is none of your business." "Grover's my friend," I said. "He wasn't lying to you about Pan's death. I saw it myself. You were just too scared to accept the truth." Leneus's lips quivered. "No! Grover's a liar and good riddance. We're better off without him." I pointed at the withered thrones. "If things are going so well, where are your friends? Looks like your Council hasn't been meeting lately. — Rick Riordan

We could say that the health of a culture is equal to the collective ability of the people who work there to feel the impacts of their actions on others. Now if you're an app developer and want to help me build a tool that tracks that, please give a call. What I've seen over and over again in my career as a business leader and leadership mentor is that this one thing - the inability of people to feel their impact on others - is the cause of cultural dysfunction. And the higher up you are on the org chart, the more problematic that weakness is in terms of what it does to the culture at large. Which is why, as a manager, the most important thing you can do - after recognizing your own impact on your team - is to help people see their impacts on each other, and to help them let go of the emotional story they're telling themselves that's keeping the pattern going. In — Jonathan Raymond

It's a stereotype," he hissed. "It's a damn stereotype and it's harmful. If this catches on, we'll have all sorts of sorcerers running around, waving wands and chanting spells. Do you know how ridiculous we'd look?"
Tanith shrugged. "I liked Harry Potter."
"This ain't about Harry Potter!"
"You liked Harry Potter as well."
"They're good books," he snapped, "but I do not agree with this wand business. All those guys down there, criminals and mobsters and gangsters, and who are they taking orders from? A wizard with a wand. How can they take him seriously? How are they going to take us seriously when we attack? — Derek Landy

Consider the problem of taking showers with Christians. They are, after all, constantly going on about the business of witnessing in the hopes of making converts to their God and church. Would you want to shower with such people? You never know when they might try to baptize you. — Stanley Hauerwas

I've been ripped off, conned, lied to and cheated... but I'm still here. Cheaters never prosper. If stealing from you is the only way for them to get ahead - they're never going to get very far. Because thats all they are - just a thief. When they lose it, they can't rebuild because they don't know how. They never did the ground work in the first place. All they know is how to steal! — Lisa Newton

And how do you explain to your wife that you don't have all the answers, and that you might not know what you are doing, and that you are afraid you are going to fail? How do you admit that you are most afraid that, one day, she'll walk - and replace you with an educated, professor-type guy, who shares her same interests, schedule, and the way she was used to living, especially when all of your friends, your business associates, even your own damned brother, are all just waiting for you to mess up so they can have a shot at taking her away from you? How do you look the woman you love in her eyes and tell her that? — Leslie Esdaile

And those of us who have business opportunities and the capital to do it are going to sit in fear of the President. And a lot of people don't want to say that. They'll say, God, don't be attacking Obama. Well, this is Obama's deal and it's Obama that's responsible for this fear in America. — Steve Wynn

The idea that you try to time purchases based on what you think business is going to do in the next year or two, I think that's the greatest mistake investors make because it's always uncertain. People say it's a time of uncertainty. It was uncertain on September 10th, 2001, people just didn't know it. It's uncertain every single day. So take uncertainty as part of being involved in investment at all. But uncertainty can be your friend. I mean, when people are scared they pay less for things. We try to price. We don't try to time at all. — Warren Buffett

When you're invested in your own business, you're going to run it better. When people are financially responsible for whether their store succeeds, they're going to have that kind of entrepreneurial spirit that's harder to get if headquarters is running things. — Fred DeLuca

My rule is you want someone whos got both feet on the ground. An ideal girlfriend might be someone who works in the business and can understand what youre going through but is not an actor themselves - is willing to run lines with you but when you start acting crazy, they throw up their hands and take you for what you are and be accepting. — Wentworth Miller

The reality is that most companies are not about any values at all - they are about making money. It is extremely rare for a business to stand for anything because most businesses don't want to alienate potential customers, and if you believe in anything you are going to alienate someone. — Jerry Greenfield

A lot of the point mags are going out of business. They dropped the pay tremendously and it's all because of the internet. I used to go out once a month to LA and shoot for one week. I'd make a ton of money then come back to New York and do whatever I wanted. — Richard Kern

Where are the dogs going? you people who pay so little attention ask. They are going about their business. And they are very punctilious, without wallets, notes, and without briefcases. — Charles Baudelaire

Was a little embarrassed after I dressed and sat down to review my schoolwork. She had a large tumbler of imported sherry and poured me a small glass. The Jerez sherry was an indulgence she had learned during the two years she had lived in Barcelona and Ibiza. She pushed the schoolwork aside and started to talk, more a slangish monologue than a lecture: "I certainly don't believe that story about you screwing a pheasant-hunter but that's your business, and right now it should matter to no one except you. You're going to have a hard time, because you are lovely and your body is as fine as I've seen." I objected to this as ugly and irrelevant but she went on: "You have to study extremely hard and find some subject or profession you're obsessed with because in our culture it has been very hard on the attractive women I know. They are leered at, teased, abused, set on a pedestal, and no one takes them seriously, so you have to use all your energies to develop — Jim Harrison

Bad things are gonna' happen to you, because they happen to us all. And worrying won't stave the really bad things off. Don't make the mistake of comparing your twisted-up insides to other people's blow-dried outsides. Even the most privileged person in this stadium suffers the torments of the damned just going about the business of being human. — Mary Karr

Retailers should not be filling their minds with all the things that are wrong, with how the economy is going, or with trying to get someplace in the business world. They should enjoy being in this moment and in this day and serving the people who come in. — Wayne Dyer

My therapist shared a theory she had come across, and I liked it. It held that before making your next journey in this life, your soul sits at a large, circular conference table and chooses the souls who are going to be a part of your life. As for which particular people would be chosen, I figured they would be individuals from previous lives with whom there was still unfinished business. — Melissa Gilbert

To those who boasted of the speed with which they could now finish their business and reckoned how much time money and effort they had saved, he replied ill-humouredly that it was not important how much time a man saved, but what he did with it when he had saved it. If he used it for evil purposes then it had been better he had never had it. He tried to prove that the main thing was not that a man went swiftly but where he went and for what purposes and that, therefore, speed was not always an advantage. 'If you are going to Hell, then it is better to go slowly. — Ivo Andric

We have no business squatting on other people's land and we have only ourselves to blame if they take a dim view of it. I mean, c'mon, what would you do if someone barged into our house and just took it over? How would you react? Are you going to say, welcome, intruders, take it all, we'll gladly confine ourselves to the bathroom. That is, until you want us out of the bathroom as well. Then we will happily kill ourselves and leave you to deal with our bodies as you please. Is that what you would say? Of course not. You would make a complete ruckus. So why are you surprised when other people do the same? — Sonal Panse

I think with every successful consumer Internet business, there will be lawyers that are interested in going after your company, especially when they think that there's a financial incentive. — Jeremy Stoppelman

We have access to more resources in general, and they are not going to force a situation on us, whether its the producer, or the cover, or what songs we have to play. And it's a small enough company that it seems like the people there care about music and not just about business. — Mike Gordon

There is no blacklist. In the first place, in the entertainment business, money talks, bullshit walks. So Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins won't be blacklisted because they are bankable stars. In the second place, if you are a woman, the only things you're going to be blacklisted for in Hollywood are body fat and aging. — Janeane Garofalo

Walker and Timothy sat quietly for a very long time. "Why do so many people make it so hard for anyone to help them or to love them?" Walker asked finally.
Timothy chuckled. "Ah, Walker - if I could explain all of humanity's foibles, I'd be a rich man indeed, at least as far as money goes. I believe people are like that because of fear. They fear being loved because they fear that if they're loved, they'll have to love back. And if they love back, they may get hurt. And many people aren't ready to put their hearts on the line like that. Mostly because they don't have anything to fall back on. It's quite a shame, really, because they hurt themselves by trying to avoid getting hurt. But we have to be willing to die many times if we're ever going to get on with this business of living. — Tom Walsh

Be undeniably good. When people ask me how do you make it in show business or whatever, what I always tell them & nobody ever takes note of it 'cause it's not the answer they wanted to hear-what they want to hear is here's how you get an agent, here's how you write a script, here's how you do this-but I always say, "Be so good they can't ignore you." If somebody's thinking, "How can I be really good?" people are going to come to you. It's much easier doing it that way than going to cocktail parties. — Steve Martin

These record companies are going to be going out of business pretty soon, because people are just going to be downloading what they want to hear. — Lester Bowie

Certain jobs [films] are for the business really, because they get an audience, they get a global audience. Certain jobs are as an artist. If I can keep moving forward and strike some form of balance between them two, then I'm going to feel content. — Jack O'Connell

The point is, they have a public thing against the overweight and the underbeautiful. Those are my people there, Jared. Those are the people who pull the curtain and write the plays and make the costumes - those are the people who make the dream but who don't live it on the front of the stage. Anyone who knocks those people is not going to get my business. Or yours, because you're better than that. — Amy Lane

Andrew used to say you have to embrace the fight, walk toward the fire. He would explain that you are going to get hit with the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune no matter which way you turn. You can try to hide from the attacks of the left; you can run away from them, attempt to ignore them, pretend that the left has reached some sort of quasi-consensus in which they live and let live. That will last until the protesters are outside your business, the government regulators are outside your house, or the administrators are inside your child's classroom. Then you'll realize that while you were willing to let live, the left simply wasn't. — Ben Shapiro

I have made up my mind to say my say. I shall do it kindly, distinctly; but I am going to do it. I know there are thousands of men who substantially agree with me, but who are not in a condition to express their thoughts. They are poor; they are in business; and they know that should they tell their honest thought, persons will refuse to patronize them - to trade with them; they wish to get bread for their little children; they wish to take care of their wives; they wish to have homes and the comforts of life. Every such person is a certificate of the meanness of the community in which he resides. And yet I do not blame these people for not expressing their thought. I say to them: 'Keep your ideas to yourselves; feed and clothe the ones you love; I will do your talking for you. The church can not touch, can not crush, can not starve, cannot stop or stay me; I will express your thoughts. — Robert G. Ingersoll

I think empirically the reason people might think that wouldn't work is they are going to ask, how could anybody ever agree on having a fair judge? They would always just want the judge that was going to be sympathetic to their perspective. But we just see that's not true. Empirically it does work. There is private arbitration. Companies, when they have disputes with their employees and so forth, and they have clauses in the contracts saying "private arbitration," they go to these people. It's not like there are widespread allegations of unfairness. If there is a market for arbitration services, the way you stay in business is by having a reputation of doing a fair job of it. — Anonymous

Getting a handle on why wolves do what they do has never been an easy proposition. Not only are there tremendous differences in both individual and pack personalities, but each displays a surprising range of behaviors depending on what's going on around them at any given time. No sooner will a young researcher thing, 'That's it, I've finally got a handle on how wolves respond in a particular situation,' than they'll do something to prove him at least partially wrong. Those of us who've been in this business for very long have come to accept a professional life full of wrong turns and surprises. Clearly, this is an animal less likely to offer scientists irrefutable facts than to lure us on a long and crooked journey of constant learning. — Douglas W. Smith

I think it's probably the Dutch who are to blame for starting the whole 'art business', because before they came along, art was attached to relatively stable structures, and it was everybody's. It was like going to the movies. — Antony Gormley

If you create something that is asking for people to respond as they're going to respond, you have to allow them to respond as they're going to respond. Some of the people are going to be uninterested and some people are going to be mad for some reason, which is their business. That's just the way the world is. — Charlie Kaufman

We'll have a national dispute - debate about it, and the goal should be to bring in - to help respectfully appeal to those voters that can make the difference, the ones who are not going to be entrepreneurs, are never going to be - run a - be a CEO in some big business, and they know it, but they would like to have their Social Security, they would like to have Medicare as they paid for all their years, and they'd like rising wages rather than falling wages. — Jeff Sessions

There are two types of spirits. One makes the transition to the spirit realm and goes on to whatever comes next. They can still come back to connect with people who are alive, but it's like dropping by for a visit, and then they go back to whatever it is they were happily doing in the next life. On the other hand, earthbound spirits - ghosts - are folks who pass but still have unfinished business. They feel like they're going to be judged for something they did wrong; or they don't know they are dead; or they are angry about being dead and not getting to finish something. They have been cheated out of life. They stay on a plane that's closer to the plane of earth, and that's why they're always at the corners of our vision and the edges of our dreams. Once they complete the process and resign themselves to the fact that their time on earth is finished and they've done what they can do, they can move to the next level. — Jodi Picoult

Charlotte views her younger selves with a certain detachment. They are herself, but other incarnations, innocents going about half-forgotten business. — Penelope Lively

If they were going to be like that, then I just wished they hadn't actually been German. It was too easy. Too obvious. It was like coming across an Irishman who actually was stupid, a mother-in-law who actually was fat, or an American businessman who actually did have a middle initial and smoked a cigar. You feel as if you are unwillingly performing in a music-hall sketch and wishing you could rewrite the script. If Helmut and Kurt had been Brazilian or Chinese or Latvian or anything else at all, they could then have behaved in exactly the same way and it would have been surprising and intriguing and, more to the point from my perspective, much easier to write about. Writers should not be in the business of propping up stereotypes. I wondered what to do about it, decided that they could simply be Latvians if I wanted, and then at last drifted off peacefully to worrying about my boots. — Douglas Adams

Oh, and another change from your system: our prisons are now privately owned and operated." "Really?" West asked, frowning. "I thought governments in my time experimented with privatizing prisons and it didn't work very well." "That's because those prisons weren't really 'private.' They were still paid for by government tax dollars and operated as government-enforced monopolies. They didn't have to compete to provide the best service at the best price. Of course they were almost as inefficiently-run as ones operated directly by government. "Now criminals can choose the prison they wish to live in, and must pay the costs themselves. This means that prisons compete to provide the best care at the lowest prices. They cannot abuse prisoners without being sued and going out of business, and they cannot overcharge or no one will choose their services. — Beth Cody

Companies that recognize the need to be creative about their businesses are going to pursue this creative thinking with us or without us. It's our collective responsibility, our collective future to make sure they choose to do it with us. — Bob Schmetterer

We have 400,000 small businesses forming every year in this country. How great is that? They are employing themselves, they are potentially employing others. The bad news is, we have 470,000 going out of business every year. And why? They cite Obamacare. — Ted Cruz

I think Google's founders are both a couple of guys with some high ideals which have been to some degree reflected in the way the company has been run in terms of its having a very good workplace and good employee programs, and now that they're going public they want in some ways to be able to ensure that that kind of approach continues. So they've effectively put in place this notion of "Don't Be Evil". — Joel Bakan

We're telling small-business owners that not only are we going to raise their costs by a buck and a quarter, but we're also going to raise it with these cost-of-living adjustments. Here's what's going to happen: They're going to have to lay people off. — Chris Christie

Yeah, computers are going to take over the programming business because they have become so fast recently that they can solve the Halting Problem in five seconds flat. — Craig Bruce

Most people, they are afraid to believe in ghosts. Me, i'm afraid not to believe. Because, well, what then? If there really is nothing else- nowhere to go after this, no way to linger on this plane to finish unsettled business it we must, then that means each moment, each breath, each passing second, is as ethereal as the wind. It means all we do here on earth- the going and coming, the loving and hating- it is all for naught. So, no. Ghosts don't scare me. But no ghosts- that terrifies me. — John Searles

I'm glad about what's happening to the music business. This last crop of people we had in the 90s, who are going away now, they didn't like music. They didn't trust musicians. They wanted something else from it. — James Taylor

What difference does it make?" he says. "People can think whatever they like. I don't desire their validation."
"So you don't mind," I ask him, "that people judge you so harshly?"
"I have no one to impress," he says. "No one who cares about what happens to me. I'm not in the business of making friends, love. My job is to lead an army, and it's the only thing I'm good at. No one," he says, "would be proud of the things I've accomplished. My mother doesn't even know me anymore. My father thinks I'm weak and pathetic. My soldiers want me dead. The world is going to hell. And the conversations I have with you are the longest I've ever had. — Tahereh Mafi

We tend to mix genders when we arrange ourselves around a table for meetings. A sort of accommodation is made by the men for the women: they make space for us. they are ever-so-slightly polite, we are ever-so-slightly grateful. When we stand up at the end of a meeting, we all give ourselves a metaphorical shake that is only partly the relief of having concluded our business: we are all released from the effort of fitting ourselves together.
When men speak in these meetings, women relax; when women speak, men grow tense. I have the impression that they never know what a woman is going to say, whereas they are reasonably sure what a man will address himself to and how he will do it. So are the women; for them, too, men tend to be predictable. Women listen to women with a different kind of attention, and part of it may be loyalty to our gender; we want all of us to do well, as if we have the esprit de corps of subalterns among generals. — Anne Truitt

Talkativeness is afraid of the silence which reveals its emptiness, Kierkegaard once said. Now you know why sharing, commenting, clicking, and participating are pushed so strongly by blogs and entertainment sites. They don't want silence. No wonder blogs auto refresh with new material every thirty seconds. Of course they want to send updates to your mobile phone and include you on e-mail alerts. If the users stops for even a second, they may see what is really going on. And then the business model would fall apart. — Ryan Holiday

do know that there are thousands of dollars in your mind and it is up to you whether you are going to materialize them or not. Technology has changed how we do business. Technology has given us new opportunities. The evolution of technology requires a new way of thinking! Today, people with an internet connection can have access to cutting edge knowledge in virtually any topic that concerns them. They are willing to pay for that knowledge and this is the reason why the online teaching businesses have been growing rapidly in the recent years. The question is how are you going — Vladimir Raykov

The great lesson in microeconomics is to discriminate between when technology is going to help you and when it's going to kill you. And most people do not get this straight in their heads. But a fellow like Buffett does. For example, when we were in the textile business, which is a terrible commodity business, we were making low-end textiles-which are a real commodity product. And one day, the people came to Warren and said, "They've invented a new loom that we think will do twice as much work as our old ones." — Charlie Munger

So, " Nathan said, attention focused on Adrian, "now that Vasilisa's graduated, what are you going to do with yourself? You aren't going to keep slumming with high school students, are you? There's no point in you being there anymore. "
"I don't know, " said Adrian lazily. "I kind of like hanging out with them. They think I'm funnier than I really am. "
"Unsurprising, " his father replied. "You aren't funny at all. It's time you do something productive. If you aren't going to go back to college, you should at least start sitting in on some of the family business meetings. Tatiana spoils you, but you could learn a lot from Rufus. "
"True, " said Adrian deadpan."I'd really like to know how he keeps his two mistresses a secret from his wife. "
"Adrian!" snapped Daniella, a flush spilling over her pale cheeks — Richelle Mead

Mr. Market does not always price stocks the way an appraiser or a private buyer would value a business. Instead, when stocks are going up, he happily pays more than their objective value; and, when they are going down, he is desperate to dump them for less than their true worth. — Benjamin Graham

There go my people. I must find out where they are going so I can lead them. — Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin

I've done well, I've been disappointed, and I think it all goes back to you. Of course the labels are going to be the labels. It's the music business. You are a business. That's what they do. So you've got to protect yourself. — Mary J. Blige

We'll serve, on a good Saturday night six or seven thousand people in all the restaurants, and it's like, the percentages are that maybe one person's not going to like what they get. And I can't be there to fix it. I hate that. We're in this business to make things that please people. — Todd English

The quest for a contemplative life can actually be self-absorbed, focused on my quiet and me. If we love people and have the power to help, then we are going to be busy. Learning to pray doesn't offer us a less busy life, it offers us a less busy heart. In the midst of outer business we can develop an inner quiet. Because we are less hectic on the inside, we have a greater capacity to love ... and thus to be busy, which in turn drives us even more into a life of prayer. By spending time with our Father in prayer, we integrate our lives with his, with what he is doing in us. Our lives become more coherent. They feel calmer, more ordered, even in the midst of confusion and pressure. — Paul E. Miller

If I was going to be a woman, I would want to be as beautiful as possible. And they said to me, 'Uh, that's as beautiful as we can get you.' And I went home and started crying to my wife, and I said, 'I have to make this picture.' And she said, 'Why?' And I said, 'Because I think I'm an interesting woman when I look at myself on screen, and I know that if I met myself at a party, I would never talk to that character because she doesn't fulfill, physically, the demands that we're brought up to think that women have to have in order for us to ask them out.' She says, 'What are you saying?' and I said, 'There's too many interesting women I have not had the experience to know in this life because I have been brainwashed.' It was not what it felt like to be a woman. It was what it felt like to be someone that people didn't respect, for the wrong reasons. I know it's a comedy. But comedy's a serious business. — Dustin Hoffman

Ultimately, if you want to make movies, you've got to want to make movies every day, when people are paying you to make movies and when they're not, because you're going to get a lot more no's on this business, no matter what it is, than you are going to get yeses. — Morgan Spurlock

I think that any artistic decision that is based on whether or not you are going to make money it is not really an artistic decision. It is a business decision. And there are a lot of things that I can do to earn a living and a lot of things that I have already done to earn a living which produce the amount of capital needed to do this project. I came here to spend money on an English orchestra and record my music, so I can take it home and I can listen to it. And... if somebody else likes that kind of stuff, I will make it available on a record so that they can hear it. That is my part of the public service of spending the money to make this event happen. No foundation grant, no government assistance, no corporation, no comittee. Just a crazy guy who spent the money to hire English musicians to do a concert at the Barbican and make an album for Barking Pumpkin Records. — Frank Zappa

We can't wait for Washington. Business leaders are going to have to galvanize their own constituencies and do everything they can to demonstrate confidence in the economy, and I think that can be contagious. — Howard Schultz

Roughly speaking, when you are dealing with business firms operating in a competitive system, you can assume that they're going to act rationally. Why? Because someone in a firm who buys things at $10 and sells them for $8.00 isn't going to last very long in that firm. — Ronald Coase

Most firms are looking for people who will stay up until three A.M. seven nights a week making slides for a partner who goes home to Wellesley for dinner every night at five P.M. - and who will do so thinking that they're 'winning.' Look at it this way: most firms assume that you'll leave for law school or business school within three years, and they invest in your training accordingly. Quality mentoring when you're young is worth whatever you pay for it. Sometimes that means less money, sometimes that means less of a life beyond work. But quality mentoring is not going to be delivered by someone who is twenty-six, and just one tidal cycle ahead of you. — Marina Keegan

A sense of humor is a serious business; and it isn't funny, not having one. Watch the humorless closely: the cocked and furtive way they monitor all conversation, their flashes of panic as irony or exaggeration eludes them, the relief with which they submit to the meaningless babble of unanimous laughter. The humorless can programme themselves to relish situations of human farce or slapstick - and that's about it. They are handicapped in the head, or mentally 'challenged', as Americans say (euphemism itself being a denial of humour). The trouble is that the challenge wins, every time, hands down. The humorless have no idea what is going on and can't make sense of anything at all. — Martin Amis

Well, as a former small businessperson - I understand what's going on, I think in the business community. And businesspeople around the country are looking at all the spending and all the debt. They're looking at all the policies coming out of this Congress and this administration the last two years, and they - it's created all this uncertainty. — John Boehner

Just for today, i'll allow many things to be out of my control ... This can be very difficult for many of us. When someone tells us about something bad going on, we tend to want to solve the problem, to exercise some level of control over it. If someone is misbehaving, we often feel obligated to make that person change his or her behavior. But many, many things in this life are not under our control, nor should they be - and we shouldn't try to exert our influence trying to control them. Sometimes we need to accept that this is someone else's problem, and that person is able to deal with it, or that this is an issue that's going to take some time to resolve, or that this really, truly is none of my business. There are plenty of things in life that go on quite well without our involvement, and when we try to push ourselves in, we can add stress to our own lives and complicate the situations. So today, I'm going to let some things go, for they aren't my affair. — Tom Walsh

You could be the World's greatest orator and if you don't say anything while orating, they are going to walk out on you after a while. — Will Rogers

Where are the jobs going to come from? Small business, manufacturing and clean energy. Where's the money to finance them? The banks and the corporations in America today have lots of money that they can invest right now. — William J. Clinton

I don't think most people realize - and there's no reason they should - the amount of demeaning garbage you have to take if you want a career in the arts. I mean, going off to med school is something you can say with your head high. Or being a banker or going into insurance or the family business - no problem. But the conversations I had with grown-ups after college ... "So you're done with school now, Bill." "That's right." "So what's next on the agenda?" Pause. Finally I would say it: "I want to be a writer." And then they would pause. "A writer." "I'd like to try." Third and final pause. And then one of two inevitable replies: either "What are you going to do next?" or "What are you really going to do?" That dread double litany ... What are you going to do next? ... What are you really going to do? ... What are you going to do next? ... What are you really going to do ... ? — William Goldman

So we said, "OK, we'll do Apple Computer." In those days there was no money yet in this microcomputer business, and big experienced companies and investors, analysts-those kind of people, that are trained in business and much smarter than we were-they didn't think that this was going to be a real big market. They thought it was going to be a little hobby thing, like home robots or ham radios, that a few techie people would get into and really it wasn't going to go to the masses. — Jessica Livingston