Quotes & Sayings About Chamber Of Commerce

There's this Tea Party wing, the Republican Party with the Chamber of commerce folks and all of those other people. They are not anti-immigration, by the way. — Julie Roginsky

It's a crying shame we don't play more parks and fairs. I would love to go right to the Chamber of Commerce or whoever they are, so that we could get involved in a different way. — Davy Jones

We seemed about to enter an Olympian age in this country, brains and intellect harnessed to great force, the better to define a common good ... It seems long ago now, that excitement which swept through the country, or at least the intellectual reaches of it, that feeling that America was going to change, that the government had been handed down from the tired, flabby chamber-of-commerce mentality of the Eisenhower years to the best and brightest of a generation. — David Halberstam

Actually I'd had a certain amount of experience in Europe in the inter-war period, as a banker, and I was also a member of the Board of Directors of the International Chamber of Commerce. — W. Averell Harriman

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

As to industrial conditions, however, Babbitt had thought a great deal, and his opinions may be coordinated as follows: A good labor union is of value because it keeps out radical unions, which would destroy property. No one ought to be forced to belong to a union, however. All labor agitators who try to force men to join a union should be hanged. In fact, just between ourselves, there oughtn't to be any unions allowed at all; and as it's the best way of fighting the unions, every business man ought to belong to an employers'-association and to the Chamber of Commerce. In union there is strength. So any selfish hog who doesn't join the Chamber of Commerce ought to be forced to. — Sinclair Lewis

I am not a member of the chamber of commerce for show business, believe me, but there are some really good people in the business, and [Tom] Hanks has this everyman decency onscreen, but he actually is that guy. — Kurt Fuller

The hotel was once where things coalesced, where you could meet both townspeople and travelers. Not so in a motel. No matter how you build it, the motel remains the haunt of the quick and dirty, where the only locals are Chamber of Commerce boys every fourth Thursday. Who ever heard the returning traveler exclaim over one of the great motels of the world he stayed in? Motels can be big, but never grand. — William Least Heat-Moon

The energy you drew on so extravagantly when you were a kid, the energy you thought would never exhaust itself - that slipped away somewhere between eighteen and twenty-four, to be replaced by something much duller, something as bogus as a coke high: purpose, maybe, or goals, or whatever rah-rah Junior Chamber of Commerce word you wanted to use. It was no big deal; it didn't go all at once, with a bang. And maybe, Richie thought, that's the scary part. How you didn't stop being a kid all at once, with a big explosive bang, like one of that clown's trick balloons. The kid in you just leaked out, like the air of a tire. — Stephen King

Out West all the smells are sucked up out of the baked land by the sun. And it's as if all the colors in the ground are gobbled up by their sunsets, and so is the blue of the sky. The sky is high and pale and impersonal and you get the feeling it doesn't belong to you at all, but that it is the property of the chamber of commerce. In the South the sky is humid and low and rich and it's yours to smell and feel. In the West you're only an observer. In the West someone sees a flower growing on a mountain and he writes a whole damned pamphlet about it. — Elliott Chaze

CLEAR THINKERS REQUIRED Tom Donohue, president and CEO of the three-million-member-strong U.S. Chamber of Commerce, organizes very popular small dinners and invites a wide variety of guests. The express purpose is the exchange of ideas. Tom brings together twenty titans of industry and empowers each with just one minute to talk on a key issue. Then Tom makes his summation. He connects all the dots in a masterful fashion, tying together what everyone has said. Chamber board member Barry Appleton says, "It is this distilled knowledge of clear and concise thinking that is the magic that keeps everyone coming back for more. — Darcy Rezac

frustration has flared up over the Common Core initiative, involving the implementation of national reading and maths standards for primary and secondary school children. The Gates Foundation played a central role in bringing the standards to fruition. Spending over $233 million to back the standards, the foundation dispersed money liberally to both conservative and progressive interest groups. The two major teachers' unions, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, each received large donations, as did the US Chamber of Commerce. Gates himself suggested that a benefit of the standards is that they open avenues towards increasing digital learning. In 2014, Microsoft announced it was partnering with Pearson to load Pearson's Common Core classroom material onto Microsoft's Surface tablet. Previously, the iPad was the classroom frontrunner; the Pearson partnership helps to make Microsoft more competitive. — Linsey McGoey

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell needs to get business lobbyists in a car and drive them around with a gun to their heads for an hour, explaining: We can give you regulatory reform, OSHA reform, tax relief, tort reform. But if we give you immigration, we won't be in a position to give you anything else, ever again, and you'll have to take your chances with Nancy Pelosi. The Chamber of Commerce has got to learn: You can't have it all. — Ann Coulter

Those tragic comedians, the Chamber of Commerce red hunters, the Women's Christian Temperance Union smellers, the censors of books, the Klan regulators, the Methodist prowlers, the Baptist guardians of sacred vessels-we have the national mentality of a police lieutenant. — H.L. Mencken

It's a dirty little secret that most New Yorkers are pleasant, thoughtful, patient, and polite. The Chamber of Commerce must work overtime to maintain the surly, off-putting image that is widely believed to define the city. In truth, niceness is nearly epidemic in this town. — Judith Kelman

Amelia's second trip to Bangor was called Woman's Day, an event arranged by the chamber of commerce in cooperation with Boston-Maine Airways. Planes of the air service flew nearly empty out of Bangor, a fact lamented by Godfrey himself. A commonly held perception was that the wives of businessmen perceived flying as dangerous and thus discouraged their husbands from using aircraft for business trips. This belief hindered the growth of air passenger service. Amelia hoped to dispel that notion. — David H. Bergquist

Moscone and Milk were the dynamic duo of San Francisco's progressive revolution. They never forgot what they were elected to do: to fight for the burdened and afflicted, for those whose voices were never heard in the halls of power. They fought for the rights of workers, minorities, gays, and renters. And they made the same enemies: the chamber of commerce, developers, realtors, the SFPD. — David Talbot

Mohammed? Are you kidding? He was dreamed up by the Mecca Chamber of Commerce. — William S. Burroughs

When cool-climate relatives and friends are astonished to hear such temperatures, Pico Mundians put a chamber-of-commerce spin on our meteorology, noting that the humidity is a mere fifteen or twenty percent. Our average summer day, they insist, isn't like a sweltering steam bath but like a refreshing sauna. — Dean Koontz

And the Chamber of Commerce was handing out cyanide capsules. — Carl Hiaasen

The detachment of the artist is kind of creepy. It's kind of rude, and yet really it's where art comes from. It's not the same as courage. It's closer to bad manners than to courage. [ ... ] if you're going to be a writer, you basically have to say, 'this is just who I am [ ... ]'. There's a certain indefensibility about it. It's not about loving your community and taking care of it - you're not attached to the chamber of commerce. It's a little unsafe. You have to be willing to have only four friends, not 11. — Lorrie Moore

That's where Time magazine lives ... way out there on the puzzled, masturbating edge, peering through the keyhole and selling what they see to the big wide world of Chamber of Commerce voyeurs who support the public prints. — Hunter S. Thompson

Governments from the top fail as often as those from the bottom; and every great failure brings a sad social reaction, thousands and millions of helpless men laying down their lives in the unhappy process. Why may not statesmen study the past and avoid such catastrophes?
Delivered in his capacity as the American Ambassador to Germany, on October 12, 1933, in a speech to the Berlin branch of the American Chamber of Commerce, quoted in Erik Larson's book, In the Garden of Beasts. — William E. Dodd

One reason the United States is one of three countries in the world that do not have any form of paid maternity leave is that many American business leaders, like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, oppose any family-friendly policies. They scare people into thinking maternity leave will be a job killer. — Madeleine M. Kunin

N.Y. Chamber of Commerce Urges Passage of Silver For War Use. — Caryl Parker Haskins

What can I say that I have not said before?
So I'll say it again.
The leaf has a song in it.
Stone is the face of patience.
Inside the river there is an unfinishable story
and you are somewhere in it
and it will never end until all ends.
Take your busy heart to the art museum and the
chamber of commerce
but take it also to the forest.
The song you heard singing in the leaf when you
were a child
is singing still.
I am of years lived, so far, seventy-four,
and the leaf is singing still.
(from, "What Can I Say") — Mary Oliver

All too many people in power in the governments and universities of the world seem to carry a prejudice against the natural world -and also against the past, against history. It seems Americans would live by a Chamber-of-Commerce Creationism that declares itself satisfied with a divinely presented Shopping Mall. The integrity and character of our own ancestors is dismissed with "I couldn't live like that" by people who barely know how to live at all. An ancient forest is seen as a kind of overripe garbage, not unlike the embarrassing elderly. — Gary Snyder

Although Herbert Hoover in many ways prefigured him, it was Franklin D. Roosevelt who first tried to create an explicit corporate state in America with his National Recovery Administration (NRA). With its fascist-style Blue Eagle emblem, the NRA coordinated big business and labor in a central plan, and outlawed competition. The NRA even employed vigilante groups to spy on smaller businesses and report if they violated the plan. Just as in Mussolini's Italy, the beneficiaries of the U.S. corporate state were - in addition to the government itself - established economic interest groups. NRA cheerleaders included the National Association of Manufacturers, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the American Bar Association, the United Mine Workers, the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, and - above all - Gerard Swope of General Electric, who helped draft the NRA act. Only — Ludwig Von Mises

My passion for service came from my parents, and my community involvement began at a very young age, when I volunteered with the local Chamber of Commerce in Lowell, MA to help revitalize our city. — James Costos

At the time when Pope Pius VII had to leave Rome, which had been conquered by revolutionary French, the committee of the Chamber of Commerce in London was considering the herring fishery. One member of the committee observed that, since the Pope had been forced to leave Rome, Italy was probably going to become a Protestant country. "Heaven help us," cried another member. "What," responded the first, "would you be upset to see the number of good Protestants increase?" "No," the other answered, "it isn't that, but suppose there are no more Catholics, what shall we do with our herring?" - Alexandre Dumas, Le grand dictionnaire de cuisine, 1873 — Mark Kurlansky

NumbersUSA's work was critical to derailing the 2007 comprehensive federal immigration bill, which had, at that point, received the support of President Buch, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the high-tech industry, the Catholic Church, immigrant-advocacy organizations, and several industries reliant on immigration labor, including farming, food services, and construction. During the weeks leading up to the floor vote on the bill, NumbersUSA coordinated weekly phone calls with the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus, mobilized its members to engage key senators, and provided those senators with information and arguments necessary to oppose the bill. Several actors, including pro-immigrant advocates, restrictionists, and members of Congress, have credited NumbersUSA with causing the collapse of the bill in the Senate. — Pratheepan Gulasekaram