Commissions Quotes & Sayings

The best (remedy) I can devise would be to give future commissions to (federal) judges for six years with a re-appointability by the President with the approbation of both houses. If this would not be independence enough, I know not what would be ... — Thomas Jefferson

Among the weeds choking out growth and good government are the hundreds of boards, commissions, and advisory committees that have sprouted over the years. They devour time, money, and energy far beyond any real contribution they make. — Mitch Daniels

Almost all modern governments are highly conscious of what journalism calls 'world opinion.' For sound reasons, mostly of an economic nature, they cannot afford to be condemned in the United Nations, they do not like to be visited by Human Rights Commissions or Freedom of the Press Committees; their need of foreign investment, foreign loans, foreign markets, satisfactory trade relationships, and so on, requires that they be members in more or less good standing of a larger community of interests. Often, too, they are members of military alliances. Consequently, they must maintain some appearance of stability, in order to assure the other members of the community or of the alliance that contracts will continue to be honored, that treaties will be upheld, that loans will be repaid with interest, that investments will continue to produce profits and be safe. "Protracted internal war threatens all of this ... no ally wishes to treat with a government that is on the point of eviction. — Sebastian Marshall

They really can't afford to be contrarians. A major investment house can't afford to do research for five customers who won't generate a lot of commissions. — Peter Cundill

I have two hopes for the future. The first and lesser one is that game commissions will one day have sense enough to set limits that measurably reflect the sport safely available. The second and deeply urgent one is that we shall grow a race of sportsmen no one of whom will ever consider it a matter of pride to have killed a limit. — Roderick Haig-Brown

His nickname through all the wards was ' Little Friend of all the World'; and very often, being lithe and inconspicuous, he executed commissions by night on the crowded housetops for sleek and shiny young men of fashion. It was intrigue, of course. — Rudyard Kipling

At the age of six, Mahler accepted paid commissions as a composer, something he was never to do in later life, his mother having promised him two kreuzers on condition that he did not make any ink blots on the expensive music manuscript paper. — Jens Malte Fischer

Commissions suit me. They set limits. Jean Marais dared me to write play in which he would not speak in the first act, would weep for joy in the second and in the last would fall backward down a flight of stairs. — Jean Cocteau

Human rights commissions, as they are evolving, are an attack on our fundamental freedoms and the basic existence of a democratic society ... It is in fact totalitarianism. I find this is very scary stuff. — Stephen Harper

To thousands of elder women in the late sixties and early seventies [the private women's club movement] came like a new gospel ofactivity and service. They had reared their children and seen them take flight; moreover, they had fought through the war, their hearts in the field, their fingers plying needle and thread. They had been active in committees and commissions, the country over; had learned to work with and beside men, finding joy and companionship and inspiration in such work. How could they go back to the chimney-corner life of the fifties? — Laura E. Richards

We have a greedy cycle where Human Rights Commissions fine citizens in order to pay their own salaries so they can employ more Human Rights Commissions. It's a bounty system where the prizes are business owner's heads. And so as restaurants go broke, tourists get stabbed. That's human rights in New York. And perhaps America. — Greg Gutfeld

Look not to the faults of others, nor to their omissions and commissions. But rather look to your own acts, to what you have done and left undone. — Gautama Buddha

I don't like prolonged, highly expensive commissions, especially if they are chaired by judges. We seem to have overwhelming faith in judges. — David Blunkett

Not much ever really comes of commissions, really. The last one that really came up with something truly concrete was the Warren Commission, and for all its good work, most Americans persist in believing that Oswald was working in tandem with the CIA, FBI, Lyndon Johnson, and the John Birch Society. — Christopher Buckley

The lawyers have escaped most criticism [and undeservedly so]. The tax shelters [were approved by lawyers, who got paid huge commissions to do so] and every miscreant had a high-falutin' lawyer at his side. Why don't more law firms vote with their feet and not take clients who have signs on them that say, "I'm a skunk and will be hard to handle?" I've noticed that firms that avoid trouble over long periods of time have an institutional process that tunes bad clients out. Boy, if I were running a law firm, I'd want a system like that because a lot of firms have a lot of bad clients. — Charlie Munger

Profit by your own mistakes and profit by the mistakes of others. The referees were calling ball handling violations like they were getting commissions. — John Kessel

A good list of questions to ask your advisor will include the following: Where will my money be held? Right answer: Somewhere else! Are you a broker? Right answer: No! Are you a dually registered advisor? Right answer: No! Do you or any affiliate have proprietary investments of any kind? Right answer: No! How are you compensated? Right answer: Total disclosure in writing and never make commissions on any investment product. What are the credentials of you and/or your team? Right answer: If planning is involved, a CFP is ideal to have on the team. What is your planning and investment management approach? Right answer: The firm should follow a coherent philosophy rather than a bunch of different strategies (unprincipled) and should follow an approach that does not involve market timing or active trading. — Peter Mallouk

I don't work to any commissions. I do what I want to do. — Roddy Doyle

When I left art school and went in search of work, visiting publishers and showing them my drawings and illustrations, I was met with a polite and sometimes enthusiastic response but no commissions. — Chris Riddell

This closing chapter takes up three problems about authoritative reason giving that earlier chapters have raised but not resolved: what makes reasons credible, how people who work with specialized sorts of reason giving can make their reasons accessible to people outside their specialties, and what particular problems social scientists face when it comes to communicating their reasons, and reconciling them with the reasons that we as ordinary people give for our actions. Governmental commissions, we will see, offer just one of many ways to broadcast reasons. We will also see that the credibility of reasons always depends on the relation between speaker and audience, in part because giving of reasons always says something about the relation itself. — Charles Tilly

Financial planners who take commissions have a built-in conflict of interest ... even with disclosure, my choice would be a Fee-Only planner. — Jane Bryant Quinn

Clotilde stammered. "Why didn't you hang yourself? You were just saying that art is eternal. I destroyed your eternal art. Why are you still alive, man?"
"What's eternal is eternal, but I still have to get my commissions done on time," said Vasya. "What did you think?"
Vasya was just an everyday hack sculptor of average talent. And Clothilde was reading too much Schiller. — Ilya Ilf

It takes a lot more to run a good business than just trailing commissions or kickbacks otherwise everybody would succeed, wouldn't they? — John Ilhan

I don't do commissions and I like the freedom to create what my heart or mind tells me to. — Richard MacDonald

I work sometimes with dealers and sometimes people just come to me. A lot of the commissions, they just know me. They have seen something and they just approach me. — Robert Barry

I'll accept commissions from anyone who isn't frightened by my proposals. — Robert Denning

The motorization of law into mere decree was not yet the culmination of simplifications and accelerations. New accelerations were produced by market regulations and state control of the economy - with their numerous and transferable authorizations and subauthorizations to various offices, associations and commissions concerned with economic decisions. Thus in Germany, the concept of "directive" appeared next to the concept of "decree." This was "the elastic form of legislation," surpassing the decree in terms of speed and simplicity. Whereas the decree was called a "motorized law," the directive became a "motorized decree." Here independent, purely positivist jurisprudence lost its freedom of maneuver. Law became a means of planning, an administrative act, a directive. — Carl Schmitt

I have been in competitions for commissions. I've won most and lost some. Mostly, I've won. — Robert Barry

People forget that Mozart wrote for commissions. There's a thing in psychology where they think if it's popular, it can't be serious. — Anthony Hopkins

If creative procrastination, selectively applied, prevented Leonardo from finishing a few commissions - of minor importance when one is struggling with the inner workings of the cosmos - then only someone who is a complete captive of the modern cult of productive mediocrity . . . could fault him for it. Productive mediocrity requires discipline of an ordinary kind. It is safe and threatens no one. Nothing will be changed by mediocrity. . . . But genius is uncontrolled and uncontrollable. You cannot produce a work of genius according to a schedule or an outline. — Adam M. Grant

To the second end, we hold that minimum wage commissions should be established in the Nation and in each State to inquire into wages paid in various industries and to determine the standard which the public ought to sanction as a minimum; and we believe that, as a present installment of what we hope for in the future, there should be at once established in the Nation and its several States minimum standards for the wages of women, taking the present Massachusetts law as a basis from which to start and on which to improve. — Theodore Roosevelt

It is difficult to systematically beat the market. But it is not difficult to systematically throw money down a rat hole by generating commissions and other costs. — Michael Jensen

Our standard prescription for the know-nothing investor with a long-term time horizon is a no-load index fund. I think that works better than relying on your stock broker. The people who are telling you to do something else are all being paid by commissions or fees. The result is that while index fund investing is becoming more and more popular, by and large it's not the individual investors that are doing it. It's the institutions. — Charlie Munger

My view of the charity world is that compared with business, there is too much talk, way too many meetings and expert panels and blue-ribbon commissions, and not enough action. Or as an Australian friend of mine once opined: "Sometimes you just have to have a go and get on with it, mate!". — John Wood

The main source of my income is through the commissions of the large-scale works and big sculptures, the projects. — Andy Goldsworthy

If we do not halt this steady process of building commissions and regulatory bodies and the special legislation like huge inverted pyramids over every one of the simple constitutional provisions, we shall soon be spending many billions of dollars more. — Franklin D. Roosevelt

I never smoke grass and drive my car because, for one thing, no matter how many letters I write to the road commissions, they still refuse to start designing highways with second-chance exits. — Arj Barker

The average person can't really trust anybody. They can't trust a broker, because the broker is interested in churning commissions. They can't trust a mutual fund, because the mutual fund is interested in gathering a lot of assets and keeping them. And now it's even worse because even the most sophisticated people have no idea what's going on. — Seth Klarman

The Bush administration, they had two blue ribbon commissions about infrastructure finance that recommended a lot more money, and additionally the gas tax being increased. We couldn't get them to accept being able to move forward. Since President Obama's been in office, there has been, to be charitable, a lack of enthusiasm for raising the gas tax. — Ray LaHood

It is subversive to set up inquisitions like this, state or national, into the thoughts and consciences of Americans ... It is subversive for commissions like this to spread hysteria and intimidation throughout the land that Americans are afraid to sign petitions, afraid to read progressive magazines, afraid to make out checks for liberal causes, afraid to join organizations, afraid to speak their mind on public issues. Americans dare not be free citizens! This is the destruction of democracy. — Florence Luscomb

One who knows the Mississippi will promptly aver - not aloud, but to himself - that ten thousand River Commissions, with the mines of the world at their back, cannot tame that lawless stream, cannot curb it or confine it, cannot say to it, Go here, or Go there, and make it obey; cannot save a shore which it has sentenced; cannot bar its path with an obstruction which it will not tear down, dance over, and laugh at. — Mark Twain

The growth stock theory of investing requires patience, but is less stressful than trading, generally has less risk, and reduces brokerage commissions and income taxes. — Thomas Rowe Price Jr.

When the going gets tough in Washington, presidents appoint 'blue ribbon' commissions. — Christopher Buckley

Not surprisingly, the insurance lobby recoils in horror at the prospect of automatic coverage ( including, when it was first proposed, Social Security), no matter how efficient it may be. Automatic coverage eliminates sales commissions and profit. — Andrew Tobias

Lost are many great commissions by such neglect. — James Wyatt

Average" isn't so hot at the race track given those steep track takes. "Average" is pretty decent for stocks, something like 6 percent above the inflation rate. For a buy-and -hold investor, commissions and taxes are small. — William Poundstone

If a kid is being bullied at school, my advice to them is to punch the bully in the face. The government can create as many boards, commissions, and informational sessions on sensitivity that it wants. The fact is, we still have bullies, and we still have victims who are trained not to stand up for themselves. — Joe Wurzelbacher

Even if the purely personal hardships of "labour" in the 'forties were not exaggerated, they have simply disappeared now...instead of starvation-wages for the individual "hand", elaborate calculations are made - not on comic opera stages, but in solemn Committees and even Commissions - how much it will take to keep him, his wife, and their two or three children, housed, fed, clothed, and amused - education and medical attendance being already provided for at the expense of the upper and middle classes...have all these enormous changes in their favour benefited the morale of the working classes?...Are they not lazier, greedier, more full of hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness towards other classes, readier to put on those classes any burden of which they may relieve themselves? — George Saintsbury

I've had those people very interested in my writing. Since I think of myself as a composer, I feel really good. I've had lots of guys call me up. I've gotten two or three commissions to write things. I've written lots of movie scores. — Ornette Coleman

A tendency for the male perspective to dominate responses to films, whether that's commissions or how a film is presented in the world. The market is used to a male voice and a male audience, which it feeds — Lynne Ramsay

What imperialists actually wanted was expansion of political power without the foundation of the body politic. Imperialist expansion had been touched off by a curious kind of economic crisis, the overproduction of capital and the emergence of "superfluous" money, the result of oversaving, which could no longer find productive investment within national borders. For the first time, investment of power did not pave the way for investment of money, since uncontrollable investments in distant countries threatened to transform large strata of society into gamblers, to change the whole capitalist economy from a system of production to a system of financial speculation, and to replace the profits of production with profits in commissions. The decade immediately before the imperialist era, the seventies of the last century, witnessed an unparalleled increase in swindles, financial scandals, and gambling in the stock market. — Hannah Arendt

A lot of artists were members of the artistic union. It gave you the possibility to buy paints, canvases, brushes, even the possibility to get a studio if you had the money to build it. It also gave you the possibility to make your living by making official art and then you would get a lot of "official" commissions: portraits, paintings, murals, etc. — Ilya Kabakov

Let none find fault with others; let none see the omissions and commissions of others. But let one see one's own acts, done and undone. — Gautama Buddha

That was par for the course but I also found that commissions were being canceled and in fact I considered this directly libelous - I write biographies for a living as well as being a journalist - for a non fiction book to be called fiction from beginning to end. — Anthony Holden

There's no card, business card, better than a compact disc for a composer. It doesn't half impress people and they get a long way on it ... these composers they will get more performances, more commissions, more recognition just by having that disc — Peter Maxwell Davies

I think it's perhaps fair to say we've been one of the most influential Royal Commissions this country ever had and there's nothing we have said that isn't relevant to the present situation. — Frank Scott

We have to have the money to do the work we want to do, as well as to keep a roof over our heads and food on the table. Fat commissions are good, but not always easy to come by, and each new painting takes its time. So we need to find every way possible to earn extra income from our work. — Elizabeth Aston

Doctors need to be held accountable, since power corrupts. There must be complaints procedures and litigation, commissions of enquiry, punishment and compensation. At the same time if you do not hide or deny any mistakes when things go wrong, and if your patients and their families know that you are distressed by whatever happened, you might, if you are lucky, receive the precious gift of forgiveness. — Henry Marsh

First, liberals discover social and economic problems. Not a difficult task: the human race has always had such problems and will continue to, short of the Garden of Eden. Liberals, however, usually need scores of millions in foundation grants and taxpayer-financed commissions to come up with the startling revelations of disease, poverty, ignorance, homelessness, et al. Having identified "problems" to the accompaniment of much coordinated fanfare, the liberals proceed to invoke "solutions," to be supplied, of course, by the federal government, which we all know and love as the Great Problem-Solving Machine. — Anonymous

In my regular life, I am very involved in commissions for cities and sometimes countries. And I think of public art as a team sport. The outcome is only possible with the interaction of all the players. — Janet Echelman

I'm not big on commissions. — Leon Panetta

Commissions add up, taxes are a big drag, margin ain't cheap. A good accountant costs money as well. The math on this one is obvious, yet investors often fail to recognize it: Keep your costs low and your turnover lower, and you will win in the end. — Barry Ritholtz

During the modern period, the vanguard architect has usually relied on small residential jobs both to supply a steady income and to serve as 'sketches' for ideas that are often later translated to the larger scale of public commissions. — Martin Filler

I think it might be nice if there was a Cosimo de' Medici around today, offering commissions to the poor, but talented artists. — Mary Pope Osborne

At Performa in New York, there are a lot of commissions, but Manchester Festival is the only festival where everything is fully produced by the festival. — Hans Ulrich Obrist

It seems dangerous to be a portrait artist who does commissions for clients because everyone wants to be flattered, so they pose in such a way that there's nothing left of truth. — Henri Cartier-Bresson

Many of our elected officials have virtually handed the keys to our schools over to corporate interests. Presidential commissions on education are commonly chaired by the executives of large companies. — Alfie Kohn

Children cannot eat rhetoric and they cannot be sheltered by commissions. I don't want to see another commission that studies the needs of kids. We need to help them. — Marian Wright Edelman

Ten salespeople, all young, all dressed in generic cotton casual, looked up from their conversations, spotted the money in her hand, and simultaneously stopped breathing-their brains shutting down bodily functions and rerouting the needed energy to calculate the projected commissions contained in Jody's cash. One by one they resumed breathing and marched toward her, a look of dazed hunger in their eyes: a pack of zombies from the perky, youthful version of The Night of the Living Dead. "I wear a size four and I've got a date in fifteen minutes," Jody said. "Dress me." They descended on her like an evil khaki wave. — Christopher Moore

The church is missionary by nature because God through the Spirit calls, creates, and commissions the church to communicate to the world that the redemptive reign of God has broken into human history. — Craig Van Gelder

If you want people to perform better, you reward them, right? Bonuses, commissions, their own reality show. Incentivize them ... But that's not happening here. You've got an incentive designed to sharpen thinking and accelerate creativity, and it does just the opposite. It dulls thinking and blocks creativity. — Daniel H. Pink

Create a high converting lead page, build a quality email subscriber list and earn lucrative affiliate commissions. — Money

Clearly, private developers can have different aims, and architects can only play a certain role. You can have some pretty big battles on public commissions, too. The key is to have a good client. — Richard Rogers

I have done it [appointed commissions] regretfully and with the hope that it would be temporary. But after a commission is established you find it always wants to enlarge itself, employ more people, is very busy with Senators and Congressmen to impress upon them the great value of the services of the commission, and even when I talk to people that I appoint to commissions and tell them I would like them to go on to various boards with the idea that they may be abolished, they say they ought to be abolished, but when they have taken their position they very soon seem to change their mind. — Calvin Coolidge

The great art in writing advertisements is the finding out of a proper method to catch the reader's eye; without which, a good thing may pass over unobserved, or lost among commissions of bankrupt. — Joseph Addison

Whatever else they do, governmental commissions give reasons. In the Anglo-American political tradition, royal commissions and their nonroyal counterparts regularly form by executive order during national crises. Like reports from the National Research Council, they broadcast consensus among authorities, and thus aim to still controversy. Composed of distinguished citizens whose reputations shield them from charges of partisanship and self-interest, commissions usually call witnesses and issue reports. But at the end, they offer their own considered collective judgment on the matter at hand - their reasons. — Charles Tilly

I must confess that here I had to compromise the principle of giving no commission, which in Bombay I had so scrupulously observed. I was told that conditions in the two cases were different; that whilst in Bombay commissions had to be paid to touts, here they had to be paid to vakils who briefed you; and that here as in Bombay all barristers, without exception, paid a percentage of their fees as commission. — Mahatma Gandhi

After much jousting between the Congress and the president over the appointment of more officers, Madison by the end of the year had issued commissions to over eleven hundred individuals, 15 percent of whom immediately declined them, followed by an additional 8 percent who resigned after several months of service. — Gordon S. Wood

Anytime someone basically commissions a piece, I write a song based on something personal to them. I go online and I do research on that person - Wikipedia, YouTube interviews, anywhere I can find a piece of information that kind of tugs at your heart a little bit. — Skylar Grey

The French delegates now wore a cynical smile as they argued before the commissions; they had their assurance that their armies were going to hold the Rhineland and the Sarre, and that a series of buffer states were to be set up between Germany and Russia, all owing their existence to France, all financed with the savings of the French peasants, and munitioned by Zaharoff, alias Schneider-Creusot. France and Britain were going to divide Persia and Mesopotamia and Syria and make a deal for the oil and the laying of pipelines. Italy was to take the Adriatic, Japan was to take Shantung - all such matters were being settled among sensible men. Lanny — Upton Sinclair

She asserted that Europeans like them were robbers with guns who went all over the world stealing other people's land, which they then called their plantations. And they made the people they robbed their slaves. She was taking a long view of history, of course. Tarkington's Trustees certainly hadn't roamed the world on ships, armed to the teeth and looking for lightly defended real estate. Her point was that they were heirs to the property of such robbers, and to their mode of thinking, even if they had been born poor and had only recently dismantled an essential industry, or cleaned out a savings bank, or earned big commissions by facilitating the sale of beloved American institutions or landmarks to foreigners. — Kurt Vonnegut

I've spent quality time in the aerospace community, with my service on two presidential commissions, but at heart, I'm an academic. Being an academic means I don't wield power over person, place or thing. I don't command armies; I don't lead labor unions. All I have is the power of thought. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Government commissions are where accountability goes to die. — Ilana Mercer

I started doing sculpture in 1959. I had no commissions then. They were painted, similar in style to the paintings ... At a certain point, I decided I didn't want an edge between two colors, I wanted color differences in literal space. — Ellsworth Kelly

The greatest success is creating whatever you want without conditions. I don't do commissions unless I really want to, because it's like having a job. — Richard MacDonald

Left-wing politics has discarded the revolutionary paradigm advanced by the New Left, in favour of bureaucratic routines and the institutionalization of the welfare culture. The two goals of liberation and social justice remain in place: but they are promoted by legislation, committees and government commissions empowered to root out the sources of discrimination. Liberation and social justice have been bureaucratized. — Roger Scruton

By default, I am a travel photographer. I work on a combination of commissions and personal projects that take me around the world. — Martin Parr