Dirty Business Quotes & Sayings

Politics is a dirty, ruthless business, Agent Robie. It makes the intelligence sector look relatively honorable by comparison. — David Baldacci

The tagline behind "House of Lies" is funny, dirty, business. The show is a comedy satire about how big business operates. Most Americans that work in corporate America should be able to relate to this show. — Larenz Tate

Once in power, Stalin's campaign to succeed Lenin required a legitimate heroic career which he did not possess because of his experience in what he called 'the dirty business' of politics: this could not be told, either because it was too gangsterish for a great, paternalistic statesman or because it was too Georgian for a Russian leader. His solution was a clumsy but all-embracing cult of personality that invented, distorted and concealed the truth. Ironically this self-promotion was so grotesque that it fanned sparks, sometimes innocent ones, which flared up into colossal anti-Stalin conspiracy-theories. It was easy for his political opponents, and later for us historians, to believe that it was all invented and that he had done nothing much at all - particularly since few historians had researched in the Caucasus where so much of his early career took place. An anti-cult, as erroneous as the cult itself, grew up around these conspiracy-theories. — Simon Sebag Montefiore

When I was forty, I was getting divorced, living in a low-class, dirty hotel in New York. My mother was dying of cancer. I owed $20,000. That was about the lowest. I came back to show business, and I couldn't get a job. I was turned down by every small-time agent in New York. — Rodney Dangerfield

Politics is a dirty business, a ruse, an ideological cul-de-sac, a vast looter of intellectual and financial resources, a lie that corrupts, a deceiver, a means of unleashing vast evil in the world of the most unexpected and undetected sort and the greatest diverter of human productivity ever concocted by those who do not believe in authentic social and economic progress. — Jeffrey Tucker

The love of dirt is among the earliest of passions, as it is the latest. Mud-pies gratify one of our first and best instincts. So long as we are dirty, we are pure. Fondness for the ground comes back to a man after he has run the round of pleasure and business, eaten dirt, and sown wild oats, drifted about the world, and taken the wind of all its moods. The love of digging in the ground (or of looking on while he pays another to dig) is as sure to come back to him, as he is sure, at last, to go under the ground, and stay there. — Charles Dudley Warner

My name is Hank. As of seven months ago, I have been on this space station for 132 years. I've watched it transform this way and that way. People come and go. I've worked for many of you. Against many of you. I've ... killed more people than I can count, not always for good reasons. Of that, I am not proud. I've settled your fights, fixed your business deals, done your dirty work, and generally done what I was told. And I'd like to say that all you immature bastards can kiss my ass. — Anonymous

It is a dark and dirty business, Will Henry. And you are well on your way." He patted my knee, not to congratulate, I think, but to console. His tone was sad and bitter. "You are well on your way. — Rick Yancey

He thought of how when you went out and listened to what people said, you heard all kinds of things, people washing their dirty linen in public, talking about friends and business and,gash, and it made him think how the world must be, at every minute, so full of people fighting, and jazzing, and dying, and working, and losing jobs, and it was a funny world, all right, full of funny people, millions of them. And he was only one out of all these millions of people, and they were all trying to get along, and many of them had gotten farther than he. — James T. Farrell

I believe that if we had and would keep our dirty, bloody, dollar-soaked fingers out of the business of these nations so full of depressed, exploited people, they will arrive at a solution of their own ... And if unfortunately their revolution must be of the violent type because the "haves" refuse to share with the "have-nots" by any peaceful method, at least what they get will be their own, and not the American style, which they don't want and above all don't want crammed down their throats by Americans. — Michael Parenti

I reject the cynical view that politics is a dirty business. — Richard M. Nixon

Anyhow, I don't think Don King's a very good man. But then again, I doubt that a good man *could* succeed in his business. I'm sure boxing was a dirty sport before he came around. He may have just made it moreso. So that's about all I've got to say about him. — Muhammad Ali

After a bout of sex,
Sam: And P.S., if I'm going to have to do this Bible-holding business twice a year, I ought to get paid a special stipend.
Nick: I just made a deposit. — Marie Force

The organization likes to do their dirty business where no one can see it. — Julie Kagawa

The dirty little secret of what used to be known as Wall Street securities firms-Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, and Bear Stearns-was that every one of them funded their business in this way to varying degress, and every one of them was always just twenty-four hours away from a funding crisis. The key to day-to-day survival was the skill with which Wall Street executives managed their firms' ongoing reputation in the marketplace ... — William D. Cohan

There's a lot of dirty theology out there, the religious counterpart to dirty politics and dirty business, I suppose. You might call it spiritual pornography - a kind of for-profit exploitative nakedness. It's found in many of the same places as physical pornography (the Internet and cable TV for starters), and it promises similar things: instant intimacy, fantasy and make-believe, private voyeurism and vicarious experience, communion without commitment. That's certainly not what we're after in these pages. No, we're after a lost treasure as old as the story of the Garden of Eden: the ... — Brian D. McLaren

We got to do something about these Asians coming in and opening up business and dirty shops. They ought to go. — Marion Barry

Like sex in Victorian England, the reality of Big Business today is our big dirty secret. — Ralph Nader

The tyranny of this dictatorship isn't primarily the fault of Big Business, nor of the demagogues who do their dirty work. It's the fault of Doremus Jessup! Of all the conscientious, respectable, lazy-minded Doremus Jessups, who have let the demogogues wriggle in, without fierce enough protest." 14 — Sinclair Lewis

Oh, Christ. Word stuff, paper stuff, and that's neither words nor paper in that goddam little coffin, that's my son, my kid, my little dirty gap-toothed boy with the torn britches and the scabs on his knees, and he wasn't ever intended to ride thunder and bridle lightning, no man is. Pulp heroes were all made of wood and they could do it, but Dan's human and soft and easily broken. He hasn't any business there, no man has. — Mike Resnick

If you took a couple of David Bowies and stuck one of the David Bowies on the top of the other David Bowie, then attached another David Bowie to the end of each of the arms of the upper of the first two David Bowies and wrapped the whole business up in a dirty beach robe you would then have something which didn't exactly look like John Watson, but which those who knew him would find hauntingly familiar. — Douglas Adams

I do most of my business on that dirty Internet that you were just talking about, where I find there is a lot of freedom to report exactly what I want. — Matt Drudge

There is a point of view among astronomical researchers that is generally referred to as the Principle of Mediocrity ... If the Sun and its retinue of worlds is only one system among many, then many other systems will be like ours: home to life. Indeed, to the extent that this is true, we should be prepared for the possibility that, even in the Milky Way galaxy, billions of planets may be carpeted by the dirty, nasty business known as life. — Seth Shostak

Admit it. You just had sex," Alice hissed.

Cali's jaw dropped open. "That's none of your business," she replied in outrage, "and how the hell did you know?"

Alice shook her head "You're glowing orgasmically. It's disgustingly sweet. And Kent looks ridiculously relaxed and possessive."

Brushing her best friend away and flushing a little, Cali pretended to look for her salad tongs. "Mind your own business."

"Fine," Alice grumbled. "Don't tell me all the dirty details." She paused for a beat. Then added, "It was rear entry, wasn't it?"

Cali almost strangled on her shock and indignation. "It was not."

Alice chuckled maliciously. "Don't lie to me. He has that macho glint in his eyes. I'd know that look anywhere. I'm an anthropologist, remember? And mating rituals are one of my specialties. — Zannie Adams

All kids love to get dirty, but if I wandered into the garage, my father would say: 'Son, you're not going to have filthy hands like mine. You're going into show business.' — Bruce Forsyth

I said maybe if you loved a woman it wouldn't seem so boring, but Eric said it would be spoiled by thinking this woman too was just an animal like the rest, so if he loved anybody he would never go to bed with her. He'd go to a whore if he had to and keep the woman he loved free from all the dirty business. — Sylvia Plath

I want to remind pastors and leaders that we do not own the church - God does. We aren't called to serve the church from a place of fear with our primary focus on protecting our boundaries. We are called to fling wide the doors, to invite to the banquet those on the margins, those who will challenge our comfort and our aversion to getting our hands dirty. Announcing the kingdom is risky business. When our experience of church becomes so predictable and so controlled, one has to wonder how far we've strayed from the calling to be ambassadors of reconciliation to those far beyond the walls of the church. — Wendy Vanderwal-Gritter

With my sister perched on my arm, I walked to the elevator. A business man with a rolling suitcase was waiting by the doors. His eyes widened as he saw me. I must've looked pretty strange - a tall black kid in dirty, ragged Egyptian clothes, with a weird box tucked under one arm and a bird of prey perched on the other.
"How's it going?" I said.
"I'll take the stairs." He hurried off. — Rick Riordan

Far and away the greatest menace to the writer - any writer, beginning or otherwise - is the reader. The reader is, after all, a kind of silent partner in this whole business of writing, and a work of fiction is surely incomplete if it is never read. The reader is, in fact, the writer's only unrelenting, genuine enemy. He has everything on his side; all he has to do, after all, is shut his eyes, and any work of fiction becomes meaningless. Moreover, a reader has an advantage over a beginning writer in not being a beginning reader; before he takes up a story to read it, he can be presumed to have read everything from Shakespeare to Jack Kerouac. No matter whether he reads a story in manuscript as a great personal favor, or opens a magazine, or - kindest of all - goes into a bookstore and pays good money for a book, he is still an enemy to be defeated with any kind of dirty fighting that comes to the writer's mind. — Shirley Jackson

During dinner at the Dersinghams in "Angel Pavement" ...
"Do you ever watch rugger, Golspie?" Mr Dersingham demanded down the table.
"What, rugby? Haven't see a match for years," replied Mr Golspie. "Prefer the other kind when I do watch one."
Major Trape raised his eyebrows, "What, you a soccah man? Not this professional stuff? Don't tell me you like that."
"What's the matter with it?"
"Oh, come now! I mean, you can't possibly
I mean it's a dirty business, selling fellahs for money and so on, very unsporting. — J.B. Priestley

Violence begets violence by whomever used. War is a dirty business and entails the use of degrading means, whoever wages it. — A.J. Muste

Inflammatory passion and selfish interest characterizes most men, whereas ambition characterizes men who pursue and hold national office. Such men rise from the people through a process of self-selection, since politics is a dirty business that discourages all but the most ambitious. — Tom Cotton

She laughs. "You're so much like your father. Sometimes I wonder if you got any of my DNA at all."

I've never really seen any similarities between my dad and me. Except our love of business - our drive to succeed. We've always been evenly matched in that respect. Otherwise, my father's as straight-laced as they come. A dedicated, loyal family man through and through. Pretty much the opposite of me in every way.

"I am?"

She's still chuckling. "One day I'll tell you how your dad and I really ended up together at Columbia. And I'll include all the dirty little details he never wanted you to know."

If that story involves sex in any way, I don't want to hear it.

Ever.

As far as I'm concerned, my parents have had sex two times in their entire lives. Once for Alexandra and once for me. That's it. On some level I realize I'm deluding myself, but this is one topic where I prefer to live in denial. — Emma Chase

Theodore Senior belonged to a class and a generation that considered politics to be a dirty business, best left, like street cleaning, to malodorous professionals. — Edmund Morris

University is sheltered from the business world and they think they should not have any connection with the businesses because maybe the business is dirty or not very good. — Maurice Levy

There are people,' he said, 'who give, and there are people who take. There are people who create, people who destroy, and people who don't do anything and drive the other two kinds crazy. It's born in you, whether you give or take, and that's the way you are. Ravens bring things to people. We're like that. It's our nature. We don't like it. We'd much rather be eagles, or swans, or even one of those moronic robins, but we're ravens and there you are. Ravens don't feel right without somebody to bring things to, and when we do find somebody we realize what a silly business it was in the first place." He made a sound between a chuckle and a cough. "Ravens are pretty neurotic birds. We're closer to people than any other bird, and we're bound to them all our lives, but we don't have to like them. You think we brought Elijah food because we liked him? He was an old man with a dirty beard. — Peter S. Beagle

With joint-stock corporations, investors can place bets on the success of many different companies, without having to play a central management role in any one of them. This allows investors to diversify their financial holdings. It also allows them to capture profits on their investments, without having to get involved in the dirty, troublesome business of actually running a company. — Jim Stanford

War is a nasty, dirty, rotten business. It's all right for the Navy to blockade a city, to starve the inhabitants to death. But there is something wrong, not nice, about bombing that city. — Sir Arthur Harris, 1st Baronet

A dirty word in the film business right now is intelligence. — David Caruso

I have been, and will go on, fighting that damnable, dirty, rotten business with all the power at my command. — Billy Sunday

It's funny; it's a real balancing act. In TV, everybody's talking about authenticity. In order to make 'Dirty Jobs' authentic, I really can't be overly informed. The minute I am, I become a host ... It's a very tricky business paying a tribute to work, because TV is very bad at it. — Mike Rowe

It will help erase the idea that politics is a second-rate profession and a dirty business. — Robert Kennedy

The sorry religious novel comes about when the writer supposes that because of his belief, he is somehow dispensed from the obligation to penetrate concrete reality. He will think that the eyes of the Church or of the Bible or of his particular theology have already done the seeing for him, and that his business is to rearrange this essential vision into satisfying patterns, getting himself as little dirty in the process as possible. — Flannery O'Connor

Television is a dirty business. To survive in it you have to be part weasel, part python, and part wolf. To succeed in it, you have to be 99.9 percent great white shark. The capacity for barefaced lying also comes in handy, particularly if you are freelance. — Matt Dickinson

The Japanese fought to win - it was a savage, brutal, inhumane, exhausting and dirty business. Our commanders knew that if we were to win and survive, we must be trained realistically for it whether we liked it or not. In the post-war years, the U.S. Marine Corps came in for a great deal of undeserved criticism in my opinion, from well-meaning persons who did not comprehend the magnitude of stress and horror that combat can be. The technology that developed the rifle barrel, the machine gun and high explosive shells has turned war into prolonged, subhuman slaughter. Men must be trained realistically if they are to survive it without breaking, mentally and physically. — Eugene B. Sledge

Gossip is always a personal confession either of malice or imbecility, and the young should not only shun it, but by the most thorough culture relieve themselves from all temptation to indulge in it. It is a low, frivolous, and too often a dirty business. There are country neighborhoods in which it rages like a pest. Churches are split in pieces by it. Neighbors are made enemies by it for life. In many persons it degenerates into a chronic disease, which is practically incurable. Let the young cure it while they may. — J.G. Holland

The secret of the creative life is how to feel at ease with your own embarrassment. We're all in the dirty laundry business and we're being paid to take risks and look silly. Race car drivers get paid to risk their lives in a more concrete way; we get paid to risk our lives in an emotional way. — Paul Schrader

Politics is a dirty business, but if you do not do politics, politics will be done to you. — Will Shetterly

I believe that if we had would keep our dirty, bloody, dollar-crooked fingers out of the business of these nations so full of depressed, exploited people, they will arrive at a solution of their own. — David M. Shoup

We are not a trading company. We are a midstream asset company: pipe, storage and terminals. It's an unsexy, dirty business. It's not rocket science. — Richard Kinder

The question in their minds was, why did the outside world, and particularly the Western world, produce all these landmines, and send them to Afghanistan? This business must be stopped. It's a dirty business to produce such a horrible device. — Mohsen Makhmalbaf

I started this dirty quote business when I noticed that I only tend to read authors when their quotes convince me of wit and style. In a world overflowing with bad literature and corrupted product-placement critics the only weapon one has is either word of mouth or quotes, and me I highly prefer the latter. So I have just decided that I will only post to facebook through goodreads quotes. That's policy that makes a lot of sense for a writer. — Martijn Benders

The only scorecard that ever gets tallied in the real world is how many times you walk away from the fight and leave your opponent dead in the dust. I can shoot damn straight when the occasion calls for it, but I'm not a bulls-eye expert. The difference is, I can hit a man on the other side of the street while I'm running, ducking, and dodging automatic weapons fire. Sacrificing pinpoint accuracy for shooting fast and on the move may mean you burn a little more ammo, but in the end, it's going to keep you alive a lot longer. Gunfighting isn't a biathlon. It's an ugly business that rewards dirty tricks and being faster and meaner and more ruthless than the other guy. It's the only way you're going to win. — Jack Badelaire

The door flew open, revealing a wrinkled, forward-thrusting face wreathed with a nimbus of wispy white hair, a face resembling nothing so much as a mole emerging from its burrow. Her spectacles were so dirty that I could hardly see the use of them. She peered at us as if at two scabrous street dogs and tightened her grasp on her cane.
"What do you want? I don't let rooms, and if you've business with my sons or my husband, they work for a living. — Lyndsay Faye

History at its best is a gritty, dirty business. — Sara Sheridan