Don’t try to make a profit on a bad trade; just try to find the best place to get out.
—Linda Bradford Raschke, 1992A merchant may, perhaps, be a man of an enlarged mind, but there is nothing in trade connected with an enlarged mind.
—Samuel Johnson, 1773There is no blindness more insidious, more fatal, than this race for profit.
—Helen Keller, 1928You must not grow used to making money out of everything. One sees more people ruined than one has seen preserved by shameful gains.
—Sophocles, c. 442 BCFor the merchant, even honesty is a financial speculation.
—Charles Baudelaire, c. 1865A merchant shall hardly keep himself from doing wrong.
—Ecclesiasticus, c. 180 BCHonest commerce is the great civilizer. We exchange ideas when we exchange fabrics.
—Robert G. Ingersoll, 1882Yes to a market economy, no to a market society.
—Lionel Jospin, 1998One man’s loss is another man’s profit.
—Michel de Montaigne, c. 1580Corporations have neither bodies to be punished nor souls to be damned.
—Chinese proverbEveryone lives by selling something.
—Robert Louis Stevenson, 1892The money we have is the means to liberty; that which we pursue is the means to slavery.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau, c. 1770Trade’s proud empire hastes to swift decay.
—Oliver Goldsmith, 1770Wants keep pace with wealth always.
—Timothy Titcomb, 1859Give us the luxuries of life, and we will dispense with the necessities.
—John Lothrop Motley, 1858The money market is to a commercial nation what the heart is to man.
—William Pitt, 1805Wherever commerce prevails there will be an inequality of wealth, and wherever the latter does a simplicity of manners must decline.
—James Madison, 1783There is no profit without another’s loss.
—Roman proverbMoney is a language for translating the work of the farmer into the work of the barber, doctor, engineer, or plumber.
—Marshall McLuhan, 1964We 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, 1904Colonialism has meant selling our ore and being left with the holes.
—Samora Moisés Machel, c. 1976Profit is profit even in Mecca.
—Nigerian proverbTrade is a social act.
—John Stuart Mill, 1859The period is not very remote when the benefits of a liberal and free commerce will, pretty generally, succeed to the devastations and horrors of war.
—George Washington, 1786We get a deal o’ useless things about us, only because we’ve got the money to spend.
—George Eliot, 1860Beautiful credit! The foundation of modern society.
—Mark Twain, 1873No nation was ever ruined by trade.
—Benjamin Franklin, 1774Commerce tends to wear off those prejudices which maintain distinction and animosity between nations.
—William Robertson, 1769The sea serves the pirate as well as the trader.
—Prudentius, c. 405The merchant always has fresh losses to expect, and the dread of base poverty forbids his rest.
—Decimus Magnus Ausonius, c. 390God is making commerce his missionary.
—Joseph Cook, c. 1877Commerce has made all winds her ministers.
—John Sterling, 1843Business is other people’s money.
—Delphine de Girardin, 1852Exchange is no robbery.
—German proverbThe human working stock is of interest only insofar as it is profitable.
—Simone de Beauvoir, 1970A shopkeeper will never get the more custom by beating his customers; and what is true of a shopkeeper is true of a shopkeeping nation.
—Josiah Tucker, 1766Some 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, 2008Lord, I do not ask that thou shouldst give me wealth; only show me where it is, and I will attend to the rest.
—Kate Douglas Wiggin, 1898Peace is a natural effect of trade.
—Montesquieu, 1748It 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. 1890Money speaks sense in a language all nations understand.
—Aphra Behn, 1677More pernicious nonsense was never devised by man than treaties of commerce.
—Benjamin Disraeli, 1880