Archive

Quotes

There is no blindness more insidious, more fatal, than this race for profit.

—Helen Keller, 1928

A merchant may, perhaps, be a man of an enlarged mind, but there is nothing in trade connected with an enlarged mind.

—Samuel Johnson, 1773

Wherever commerce prevails there will be an inequality of wealth, and wherever the latter does a simplicity of manners must decline.

—James Madison, 1783

Wants keep pace with wealth always.

—Timothy Titcomb, 1859

Beautiful credit! The foundation of modern society.

—Mark Twain, 1873

God is making commerce his missionary.

—Joseph Cook, c. 1877

More pernicious nonsense was never devised by man than treaties of commerce.

—Benjamin Disraeli, 1880

The human working stock is of interest only insofar as it is profitable.

—Simone de Beauvoir, 1970

Some people make stuff; other people have to buy it. And when we gave up making stuff, starting in the 1980s, we were left with the unique role of buying.

—Barbara Ehrenreich, 2008

For the merchant, even honesty is a financial speculation.

—Charles Baudelaire, c. 1865

We are a commercial people. We cannot boast of our arts, our crafts, our cultivation; our boast is in the wealth we produce.

—Ida M. Tarbell, 1904

It is no longer a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, but a government of Wall Street, by Wall Street, and for Wall Street.

—Mary Lease, c. 1890

Corporations have neither bodies to be punished nor souls to be damned.

—Chinese proverb