Selling Off Quotes & Sayings

Jesus offered a single incentive to follow him; it was woven into all he said and did. Here is how I would after twenty-four years of following summarize his selling point: Follow me, and you might be happy
or you might not. Follow me, and might be empowered
or you might not. Follow me, and you might have more friends
or you might not. Follow me, and you might have the answers
or you might not. Follow me, and you might be better off
or you might not. If you follow me, you may be worse off in every way you use to measure life. Follow me nevertheless. Because I have an offer that is worth giving up everything you have: you will learn to love well. — Samir Selmanovic

Stop going for the easy buck and start producing something with your life. Create, instead of living off the buying and selling of others. — Martin Sheen

One time I listened to Farmer give a talk on HIV to a class at the Harvard School of Public Health, and in the midst of reciting data, he mentioned the Haitian phrase "looking for life, destroying life," Then he explained, "It's an expression Haitians use if a poor woman selling mangoes falls off a truck and dies." I felt as if for that moment I could see a little way into his mind, It seemed like a place of hyperconnectivity, At moments like that, I thought that what he wanted was to erase both time and geography, connecting all parts of his life and tying them instrumentally to a world in which he saw intimate, inescapable connections between the gleaming corporate offices of Paris and New York and a legless man lying on the mud floor of a hut in the remotest part of remote Haiti. Of all the world's errors, he seemed to feel, the most fundamental was the "erasing" of people, the "hiding away" of suffering. "My big struggle is how people can not care, erase, not remember. — Tracy Kidder

One thing that did get me into a lot of different types of music was when I was very young, the local record store went out of business and they were selling off all the vinyl. I remember going in - I was probably 16 or 17 and I'd just gotten a record player as a present. It was like hitting the jackpot: all these records for $3 apiece. — Imelda May

Drugs are so easy to get in the ghetto. They might not be easy to get in nice areas like Beverly Hills, but in Long Beach and Compton and South Central they're easy to get. They don't drop those drugs off in Beverly Hills. They drop them off in the ghetto. Then they tell us it's wrong to sell them. Well, we didn't bring them here. We just sell them. I was selling, like I sold newspapers. — Snoop Dogg

I arrived at my hut in Beverly Hills just in time to keep real estate men from plotting off and selling my front yard. They will sell you anything or anybody's in the world as long as they can get a first payment ... It used to be only Iowa that was out here but now they have three or four adjoining states interested and they are here, too. Real estate agents - you never saw as many in your life; they are as thick as bootleggers. — Will Rogers

There's a lot of money in selling marijuana. If you can do it legally, that's good. Why should all the criminals make the money? This is what people are thinking. If it's happening, if it's going to be legal, let's tax it and regulate it, like we do with everything else and make some money off this. I think that's one reason why people are talking this a little more seriously. — Willie Nelson

rather than selling people on some change, you were better off identifying the reasons for their resistance, and addressing those. Imagine — Michael Lewis

By some estimates, the oil you recently discovered off the shores of Brazil could amount to twice the reserves we have in the United States. We want to work with you. We want to help with technology and support to develop these oil reserves safely, and when you're ready to start selling, we want to be one of your best customers. — Barack Obama

Selling pot allowed me to get through college and make enough money to start off in comedy. — Bill Maher

Growing religious fundamentalism is directly linked to globalization and to privatization. The Indian government is talking about selling its entire power sector to foreign multinationals, but when the consequences of that become hard to manage, the government immediately starts saying, "Should we build the Ram temple in Ayodhya?" Everyone goes baying off in that direction. Meanwhile, contracts are signed.
It's like a game. That's something we have to understand. It's like a pincer action. With one hand they're selling the country out to multinationals. With the other they're orchestrating this howling cultural nationalism. On the one hand you're saying that the world is a global village. On the other hand governments spend millions and millions patrolling their borders with nuclear weapons. — Arundhati Roy

The transformation at the corporate level was achieved by selling off business units in old markets and by creating new business units to pursue the new opportunities. But the individual business units themselves within those transformed corporations were almost inert to change. — Clayton Christensen

'Cause I can make more money going in and doing my recordings and selling them through my entities that I have, rather than going to a record co. and them release a record and pay me 5 percent of what they make off it. — Mickey Gilley

The guy that picked me up at the airport in 1985 when I was out in L.A. for my first audition was selling a script. I was a nobody coming off a plane to read for a new show. — Scott Bakula

She paused, and said, "May I ask you a question?" He said, "Sure." "Are we having dinner?" "That's what it said on the menu. Lunch was different, and this sure ain't breakfast." "No, I mean having dinner, as opposed to grabbing road food." "As in candlelight and piano music?" "Not necessarily." "Violin players and guys selling roses?" "If appropriate." "Like a date?" She said, "Broadly, I suppose." He said, "Honest answer?" "Always." "Suppose we had found Keever yesterday, maybe stepping off the train, or fallen over in a wheat field somewhere, with a sprained ankle, somewhat hungry and thirsty but otherwise OK, then yes, for sure I would have asked you out to dinner, and if you had accepted, then we'd be having that dinner right about now, so I guess this half-qualifies. — Lee Child

Throughout history governments have been chronically short of revenue. The reason should be clear: unlike you and me, governments do not produce useful goods and services that they can sell on the market; governments, rather than producing and selling services, live parasitically off the market and off society. — Murray Rothbard

Like so much of cool hunting, Hilfiger's marketing journey feeds off the alienation at the heart of America's race relations: selling white youth on their fetishization of black style, and black youth on their fetishization of white wealth. — Naomi Klein

Wait," Toby said, talking over her as she looked around at all of us. "So this means all you guys are off, like, rounding the bases and I'm still in the dugout. I'm the person selling Cracker Jack in the stands."
"This metaphor is getting weird," Palmer murmured to me. — Morgan Matson

Faced with the almost inescapable conclusion that it had been selling lemons, Nike shifted into make-lemonade mode. Jeff Pisciotta became head of a top-secret and seemingly impossible project: finding a way to make a buck off a naked foot. — Christopher McDougall

Well, I spent six or seven years after high school trying to work myself up. Shipping clerk, salesman, business of one kind or another. And it's a measly manner of existence. To get on that subway on the hot mornings in summer. To devote your whole life to keeping stock, or making phone calls, or selling or buying. To suffer fifty weeks of the year for the sake of a two-week vacation, when all you really desire is to be outdoors, with your shirt off. And always to have to get ahead of the next fella. And still - that's how you build a future. — Arthur Miller

We reward people for making money off money, and moving money around and dividing up mortgages a thousand times over, selling it to China ... and it becomes this shell game. — Michael Moore

Smiling is the worst thing you can do if you want the world to think you're okay when you're not. Some people can't help it - it's like a tic, a tell - and others do it on purpose, thinking people will buy whatever they're selling if it comes with a flash of teeth. But the truth is, smiling only makes a lie harder to pass off. It's like a giant crack in the front of a mask. — Victoria Schwab

My very first job was selling pop off the back of a wagon. Then I went to work in a timber yard to save up for my bass amp and joined The Smiths. — Andy Rourke

Evidently, selling off America's public lands is not only good for democracy, but good for the economy. It will pay the bills for building more roads and make up for the losses in the decline of timber sales. It will also help pay for the war in Iraq, a war predicted on lies. The outcry is faint. The streets are empty. We are comfortable here in the United States of America. We the people seem to be asleep, numb, and dead to the liberties being lost. — Terry Tempest Williams

Every time a pundit or elected official is on any TV news program, it should be a polite formality to mention that GE has made such and such billions off the war in Iraq by selling arms or that Murdoch is a right-wing activist with a clear stake in who wins and who taxes his profits the least. — Adam McKay

My second business would have succeeded but for competitors' jealousy. I was selling motorbike gear cheap, but the people I was undercutting complained to the manufacturer and cut off my supply. It showed me how corrupt business can be. When I sold phones, the same thing happened, but this time I was ready. — John Caudwell

Art and resistance are great together. That's what art's made for. Look at Vincent van Gogh: He didn't cut off his ear because he was selling well. — Albert Brooks

I heard a quote once in a documentary about a band that said you're better off owning everything 100 percent and selling 20,000 copies of an album than signing with a record company and selling a million copies. There has never been a truer statement about show business than that. — Bill Burr

But just understand the difference between a man like Reardon and a man like me. He is the old type of unpractical artist; I am the literary man of 1882. He won't make concessions, or rather, he can't make them; he can't supply the market. I
well, you may say that at present, I do nothing; but that's a great mistake, I am learning my business. Literature nowadays is a trade. Putting aside men of genius, who may succeed by mere cosmic force, your successful man of letters is your skilful tradesman. He thinks first and foremost of the markets; when one kind of goods begins to go off slackly, he is ready with something new and appetising. He knows perfectly all the possible sources of income. Whatever he has to sell, he'll get payment for it from all sorts of various quarters; none of your unpractical selling for a lump sum to a middleman who will make six distinct profits. — George Gissing

We identify our secrets, our pasts and their blotches, with our identity, that revealing our habits or losses or deeds somehow makes us one less of oneself. But it's just the opposite, more is more is more
more bleeding, more giving. These things, details, stories, whatever are like the skin shed by snakes, who leave theirs for anyone to see. What does he care where it is, who sees it, this snake, and his skin? He leaves it where it molts. Hours, days or months later, we come across a snake's long-shed skin and we know something of the snake, we know that it's of this approximate girth and that approximate length, but we know very little else. Do we know where the snake is now? What the snake is thinking now? No. By now the snake could be wearing fur; the snake could be selling pencils in Hanoi. The skinks no longer his, he wore it because it grew from him, but then it dried and slipped off and he and everyone could look at it. — Dave Eggers

It's hard selling books in general: companies are merging, editors being laid off, bricks-and-mortar bookstores closing, large chain bookstores squeezing out independents, and online retailers squeezing out chain bookstores. — Christina Baker Kline

We're at risk of losing this iconic species for all time. Once it's stripped of its natural instincts, it's no longer a tiger. But there's a lot of species like that. The more intriguing thing, throughout Asia, a lot of these countries are selling off their jungle-and-forest rights for oil and for paper-and-pulp companies. — Leonardo DiCaprio

Crime is based upon need, making money. People sell drugs to make money. But if everybody is cared for, they don't sell drugs and if there's no money you can't sell drugs even if you wanted to. There'd be no such thing as gambling, prostitution, or selling out, or paying off a senator or a governor. There are no senators, there are no governors so you can't pay them off. If you take away the basis or the condition that generate abhorrent behavior, you don't have abhorrent behavior. — Jacque Fresco

The apparent strategy of Pfizer is to take over AstraZeneca, dismember it, and put the different parts of it into its three new divisions, with the ultimate aim of selling off one or more. — David Sainsbury, Baron Sainsbury Of Turville

I developed a theory of salesmanship based on the principle that one must not on any account identify oneself with the merchandise one is selling. Selling is a game where you score when you make a sale. If you allow your ego to be involved, the customer can brush you off and you lose; but if you do not identify yourself with your work you will be able to redouble your efforts when you are rejected, and if you make a sale you come out the winner. — George Soros

Selling a movie feels like a hustle to every bone in my body. Many actors have careers dominated by modeling. They're all over the place. It turns me off. People who are good at what they do ought to practice something bigger. — Sean Penn

In the beginning I was really, really lean. For the longest time I did it all. I played every hat. I was in the factory, doing the graphic design, the photography, the selling - literally everything. I saved money doing what I could myself. It was hard but I learned. I learned that nobody's better than you to get your business off the ground. The experience you get is priceless. — Lori Greiner

Poverty has a way of taking the edge off principles. Hunger can blunt them altogether. — Paula Brackston

What got you into trouble?" says the baldhead to t'other chap.
"Well, I'd been selling an article to take the tartar off the teeth - and it does take it off, too, and generly the enamel along with it - — Mark Twain

[O]ne can scarcely be frightened off writing what one wants to write for fear an obscure reviewer should patronise one on that account. — Dorothy L. Sayers

"Joy" is based, albeit loosely, on the life of Joy Mangano, an entrepreneur, inventor and QVC shopping network star with the mega-selling Miracle Mop. Jennifer Lawrence is excellent as Joy, but the film starts off on the wrong foot with woeful depictions of her background as the only sane person in her dysfunctional family. — Kenneth Turan

Flea markets are also now legal in Cuba, and a petty trade in cast-off clothing and household goods takes place. Twelve years ago it was unthinkable for anyone to buy or sell anything in the open, for buying and selling were symptoms of bourgeois individualism and contrary to Fidel's socialist vision, in which everything is to be rationed - rationally, as it were - according to need. (In practice, of course, this meant rationing according to what there was, which was not much.) — Theodore Dalrymple

There are a lot of musicians who are still desperately trying to pretend that it's 1998 and by having a huge marketing campaign, they somehow believe that they can sell 10 million records. That's delusional. No one sells 10 million records. The days of musicians getting rich off of selling records are done. — Moby

When it came down to it, though, you had to remember all those assholes cutting you off in traffic and walking the streets and shouting in bars and turning their music up too loud and mugging you and raping you and selling you lemon cars-all those assholes were just children who'd aged. No miracle. Nothing sacred in that. — Dennis Lehane

Mr. Lawrence drank from his beer. Do you know how I figure out what to do? I look under rocks for slime. I lick the slime with my own tongue. I see the problem for what it is, not what a consultant's methodology says it should be. I find people who are working on something that no one told them to work on, who solve a problem because they can't let it stay unsolved, who don't eat or bathe because it takes too much time. I find the ones selling their ideas to customers without going through the marketing department first. I've gotten good at picking molds off cheeses and turning them into penicillin. People used to wonder where my ideas came from. It was simple: I looked for slimy rocks and moldy cheese, and I watched the bank account like a hawk. It worked well for this company for a long time. — Charlie Close

Isaac's son Jacob has a daughter, Dinah. Dinah is kidnapped and raped - apparently a customary form of courtship at the time, since the rapist's family then offers to purchase her from her own family as a wife for the rapist. Dinah's brothers explain that an important moral principle stands in the way of this transaction: the rapist is uncircumcised. So they make a counteroffer: if all the men in the rapist's hometown cut off their foreskins, Dinah will be theirs. While the men are incapacitated with bleeding penises, the brothers invade the city, plunder and destroy it, massacre the men, and carry off the women and children. When Jacob worries that neighboring tribes may attack them in revenge, his sons explain that it was worth the risk: "Should our sister be treated like a whore?" 13 Soon afterward they reiterate their commitment to family values by selling their brother Joseph into slavery. — Steven Pinker

I didn't know my dad for a long time. My dad was on drugs and my dad was at the VA Hospital, my dad was off in his own world selling drugs or using them or there would be crack heads in the house or whatever it would be. — Shia Labeouf

Whenever someone brings up the traits associated with being a functional human otherwise known as an "adult," I think, is this even possible for me? Probably not, is what I conclude. I mean, I'll eventually pay off my college loans at the age of forty-five by selling what's left of my liver, and I'll probably manage to find sustenance and remember to breathe oxygen constantly. I'll survive. However, for people like me ... There will be years of struggle to keep myself afloat. — Alida Nugent

The opening chapter was the book's unique selling point, the singular idea that had carried Darcy through last November, and Coleman had just come up with it off the top of his head. — Scott Westerfeld

Scottish golf is a more public game. It is more reasonably priced and they play faster. It isn't cart golf. The only reason resorts force you into carts is for the money. They are selling off the soul of the game for a few dollars. — Daniel J. King

If it's a choice between selling a million Pocket Planners and getting the chance to be with you, I'll figure out some other way to get this product off the ground. — Bella Andre

Many think of management as cutting deals and laying people off and hiring people and buying and selling companies. That's not management; that's dealmaking. — Clayton Christensen

As sorry as I feel for myself, I feel even sorrier for her. I know she's afraid of staying and equally as frightened of going. Just as this land is a part of me, this house is a part of her. Selling off these things piece by piece is like cutting away chunks of her heart. I promised to make it better, but only God knows whether or not that's a promise I'll be able to keep. — Bette Lee Crosby

Don't be constantly selling and shilling. Figure out how you can help others, tell them stories, and share openly everything you know so that people will recognize you as someone that they can trust, who won't turn them off by constantly trying to sell them something. — C.C. Chapman

As it happens, Chicago is the nation's leader in municipal privatization efforts. That's right: The city that conservatives portray as the citadel of the power-grabbing, government-growing left has been selling itself off in pieces for years. It signed a 99-year lease for the Chicago Skyway, a toll road in the city's South Side, back in 2005. — Thomas Frank

For us, selling a million records in 2005 is the equivalent of selling 2 to 3 million records (five years ago). Rock records aren't flying off the shelves like they used to. Hip-hop and pop are so huge. (But) everything's on the upswing for us. — Jacoby Shaddix

4. Confusion in the Market Place Indeed it was, for as they approached, Milo could see crowds of people pushing and shouting their way among the stalls, buying and selling, trading and bargaining. Huge wooden-wheeled carts streamed into the market square from the orchards, and long caravans bound for the four corners of the kingdom made ready to leave. Sacks and boxes were piled high waiting to be delivered to the ships that sailed the Sea of Knowledge, and off to one side a group of minstrels sang songs to the delight of those either too young or too old to engage in trade. But above all the noise and tumult of the crowd could be heard the merchants' voices loudly advertising their products. "Get your fresh-picked ifs, ands, and buts." "Hey-yaa, hey-yaa, hey-yaa, nice ripe wheres and whens." "Juicy, tempting words for sale. — Norton Juster

I think "God" is an off-putting word. I don't think there's a name for this. I think it's a presence that is best for us, but unfortunately, it can't intervene if we don't ask it, and religion has us talking to the wall because the god that religion is selling isn't the reality. — Sinead O'Connor

People tend to be put off by the idea of selling sex, but if you spend a winter's night with one of them and talk with her about her family and so on, you're likely to find she's just like any other woman. — Eiji Yoshikawa

During the last ten years or so, I've seen quite a lot of Gordon, selling off his land for him. You know Gordon. He goes for anything trendy, especially young people's fads. Goes all out for a while, until something else takes his attention. Disco dancing, anti-draft, cocaine, anti-nuke - he has his little fling at whatever is 'in.' Most of 'em seem kind of nasty to me, but then I'm a bourgeois flag-waver."

"He calls me a fascist," Helena said.

"Oh, sure. He'd call me one too, except that I'm an Oppressed Minority. I bother him because I don't behave the way his stereotype says I should. — Bob Leman

This is part of the reason that the AIG bailout is so troubling: when at least $13 billion worth of taxpayer money given to AIG in the bailout ultimately went to Goldman, some of that money was doubtless going to cover the bets Goldman had made against the stuff the bank itself was selling to old people and cities and states. In other words, Goldman made out on the housing bubble twice: it fucked the investors who bought their horseshit CDOs by betting against its own crappy product, then it turned around and fucked the taxpayer by making him pay off those same bets. — Matt Taibbi

Grimes believed in what he did, with no doubts. Though he was older than me by over a decade, I suddenly felt old. Some things mark your soul, not in years but in blood and pain and selling off parts of yourself to get the bad guys, until you finally look in the mirror and aren't sure which side you're on anymore. There comes a point when having a badge doesn't make you the good guy, it just makes you one of the guys. I needed to be one of the good guys, or what the hell was I doing? — Laurell K. Hamilton

I do want to keep the Wedgewood Collection in place, intact, and open to the public. Selling it off would be a real tragedy. — John Caudwell

There are many days when I want to throw my computer out the window, when I tell myself I'd be better off selling shoes at the mall. But I always keep at it, because I have to. Writing is completely part of who I am. Even if I never published another book, I would keep at it - because it feeds my life and makes it richer. — Paula McLain

He felt intact but worthless, like a chocolate rabbit selling for 75 percent off the month after Easter. — Douglas Coupland

In medieval times, the Church used to sell 'indulgences' for money. This amounted to paying for some number of days' remission from purgatory, and the Church literally (and with breathtaking presumption) issued signed certificates specifying the number of days off that had been purchased ... And of all its money-making rip-offs, the selling of indulgences must surely rank among the greatest con tricks in history ... — Richard Dawkins

Basically, I didn't want to sing anything for the sake of singing it. There were some songs where I really wailed, but because it's such an intimate space anything I chose to sing simply to make sound was going to come off an inauthentic. So I was really happy with where it landed - every song I sang, I loved for one reason or another. I didn't have to worry about selling a song. — Aaron Tveit

I stole you, among others, from the streets of God's birthplace. I forced you to work as a slave. Imprisoned, mistreated and starved you and your companion. To top it off, I am in the process of selling your life to the highest bidder. Why would you trust me? — V.S. Carnes

Goldman Sachs itself - and so Goldman was in the position of selling bonds to its customers created by its own traders, so they might bet against them. Secondly, there was a crude, messy, slow, but acceptable substitute for Mike Burry's credit default swaps: the actual cash bonds. According to a former Goldman derivatives trader, Goldman would buy the triple-A tranche of some CDO, pair it off with the credit default swaps AIG sold Goldman that insured the tranche (at a cost well below the yield on the tranche), declare the entire package risk-free, and hold it off its balance sheet. Of course, the whole thing wasn't risk-free: If AIG went bust, the insurance was worthless, and Goldman could lose everything. Today Goldman Sachs is, to put it mildly, unhelpful when asked to explain exactly what it did, and this lack of transparency extends to its own shareholders. If a team of forensic accountants went over Goldman's books, they'd be shocked at just how good Goldman is at hiding things, — Michael Lewis

The way I see it there are two types of people. Those stupid enough to get ripped off by people selling ringtones and those sensible enough to set up ringtone selling services. — Claire Weekes

I was interested in this relationship between the armed robber and the banker who were from different worlds but had similar goals. It was kind of a metaphor for this larger marriage of the banks selling off their debt and these street guys scrapping over it. — Jake Halpern

Next thing you know she'll be on the bus and selling T-shirts in the parking lot, showing off her boobs to get in the stage door."
"At least she has boobs to show," Jess said.
"I have boobs," Chloe said, pointing to her chest. "Just because they're not weighing me down doesn't mean they're not substantial."
"Okay, B cup," Jess said, taking a sip of her drink.
"I have boobs!" Chloe said again, a bit too loudly
she'd already had a couple of minibottles at the Spot. "My boobs are great, goddammit. You know that? They're fantastic! My boobs are amazing. — Sarah Dessen

Resolution Trust Company was set up to liquidate a bunch of assets that the government had inherited because the savings and loans went broke. So the savings and loans went broke, the government stepped in, paid off depositors, and now they're left with this mass of assets to sell. We're not talking about selling here, we're talking about buying intelligently. They were selling what they got handed to them by a bunch of savings and loan operators that had in many cases had done some very dumb thing. But their job was to liquidate it. And they liquidated. — Howard Warren Buffett

But now I feel off the grid. I feel that I am not part of the culture. And because I don't have a car I don't really go anywhere to buy things. In fact, I have been in a slow process of selling and giving away everything I own. — Vincent Kartheiser