Auctions Quotes

• Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.

  H. L. Mencken

  Liberty, Politics, Election

  "Prejudices: First Series". Book by H. L. Mencken, 1919.

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• I used to save all my rejection slips because I told myself, one day I'm going to autograph these and auction them. And then I lost the box.

  James Lee Burke

  Rejection, One Day, Used

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• By nature, an auction is kind of a wholesale beast anyway. You're buying second hand goods, even with the historical, antique or aesthetic value. You look to get the wholesale price and you hope for retail spikes periodically when you get two or three people in the audience that want the same thing.

  Paul Brown

  Hands, Two, People

  Source: www.missbargainhuntress.com

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• A pearl goes up for auction. No one has enough, so the pearl buys itself.

  Rumi

  Pearls, Enough

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• God help us if we ever take the theater out of the auction business or anything else. It would be an awfully boring world.

  A. Alfred Taubman

  Would Be, World, Helping

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• My theory with the auctions has been to try to make them like a party, like a social event. If people are having a good time, talking with their friends, they're much more likely to bid.

  Paul Brown

  Party, Talking, People

  Source: www.missbargainhuntress.com

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• Auctions are bizarre combinations of slave market, trading floor, theatre and burlesque... a lot of people are going to be making a lot of excuses or maintaining that they were never part of this.

  Jerry Saltz

  People, Theatre, Trading Floor

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• I got [Muhammad Ali's boxing shorts] for $40 at an auction. Nobody wanted them. I have them framed in my house.

  Christopher Walken

  Boxing, House, Framed

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• I have this beautiful antique silver wine decanter that I bought at an auction. I always pour wine from that.

  Paul Lynde

  Beautiful, Wine, Antiques

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• Once they witnessed one of his painting sold at auction for $100,000. And asked how you do it, he said, 'I feel as a horse must feel when the beautiful cup is given to the jockey.'

  Edgar Degas

  Beautiful, Horse, Art

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• When the leaders choose to make themselves bidders at an auction of popularity, their talents, in the construction of the state, will be of no service. They will become flatterers instead of legislators; the instruments, not the guides, of the people.

  Edmund Burke

  People, Leader, Election

  Edmund Burke (1790). “Reflections on the Revolution in France: And on the Proceedings in Certain Societies in London Relative to that Event. In a Letter Intended to Have Been Sent to a Gentleman in Paris”, p.353

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• My father used to run auctions. He's now a singer in the Canary Islands.

  Jason Statham

  Running, Father, Islands

  Interview with Steve Head, www.ign.com. June 06, 2003.

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• I love going to tag sales, to auctions.

  Lara Spencer

  Tag

  "ABC's Lara Spencer can't wait to host 'Antiques Roadshow' in 2004". Interview with Mary Daniels, articles.chicagotribune.com. July 20, 2003.

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• I don't like masterpieces having one-night stands in collectors' homes between auctions.

  Robert Rauschenberg

  Home, Night, Masterpiece

  1989 On quick-turnover profits on his work. In the NewYork Times,10 May.

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• The results speak for themselves: Businesses that competitively sourced service contracts saved an average of about 22 percent. Even more impressive - nearly every e-auction delivered cost savings.

  Brian Miller

  Average, Insightful, Saving

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• Dark money has turned our elections into auctions

  Fred DuVal

  Dark, Election

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• I am currently doing about 30 charity auctions a year.

  Jeffrey Archer

  Years, Charity

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• The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can't get and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is sort of an advance auction sale of stolen goods.

  H. L. Mencken

  Lying, Men, Office

  "Charting the Candidates '72" by Ronald Van Doren, 1972.

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• I am not opposed to the art market. I have lots of friends who are collectors. But the whole idea of the art market is complex. Sadly we have a situation where auction houses and secondary market dealers are creating a lot of confusion and unnecessary pollution.

  Olafur Eliasson

  Art, Ideas, Creating

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• Everything I commission - whether it is for me or for a client's home or for a hotel or office - is absolutely unique to that job. I have everything made, or I find vintage and antique pieces at markets and auctions.

  Kelly Wearstler

  Jobs, Home, Unique

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• My other hobby, because I just love any job with a gavel, is auctioneer. And I so often have presided over charity auctions in New York that many years ago Sotheby's sent me my own gavel. Now, the Sotheby's gavel is infinitely more elegant--it came in a little velvet bag, with "Sotheby's" inscribed in gold. It hangs in my library. I feel that everyone has occasion to use a gavel at various times everyday, they just don't think of it.

  Fran Lebowitz

  Jobs, New York, Thinking

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• We're more familiar with what economists call an English auction - prices start low and rise as people bid. However, there is also the Dutch auction, where prices start high and go lower until somebody bites. Movies are sold to the audience via a very slow Dutch auction, where each phase between price drops can last weeks or months.

  Nathan Myhrvold

  People, Phases, Dutch

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• Well the open-outcry auction is just made to turn the brain into mush: you've got social proof, the other guy is bidding, you get reciprocation tendency, you get deprival super-reaction syndrome, the thing is going away... I mean it just absolutely is designed to manipulate people into idiotic behavior.

  Charlie Munger

  Mean, People, Guy

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• The current climate doesn't represent a threat to the production of art but to the market. I think it's time for artists to get over auction houses, galleries, and high-production-value exhibitions and start using our voices again.

  Maurizio Cattelan

  Art, Thinking, Voice

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• Notwithstanding my grandmother's long and faithful service to her owners, not one of her children escaped the auction block. These God-breathing machines are no more, in the sight of their masters, than the cotton they plant, or the horses they tend.

  Harriet Ann Jacobs

  Horse, Children, Block

  Harriet Ann Jacobs (1861). “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl”, p.16

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