Profit Motive Quotes

• We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Inspiring, Rights, Racism

  Beyond Vietnam -- A Time to Break Silence, Delivered 4 April 1967, Riverside Church, New York City

  91 Copy quote

  Show source

• We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Faith, Inspiration, Breaking Silence

  Beyond Vietnam -- A Time to Break Silence, Delivered 4 April 1967, Riverside Church, New York City

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• Profit in business comes from repeat customers, customers that boast about your project or service, and that bring friends with them.

  W. Edwards Deming

  Inspirational, Business, Loyal Customers

  28 Copy quote
• 

  Corporation: An ingenious device for obtaining profit without individual responsibility.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Inspirational, Sarcastic, Business

  Ambrose Bierce (2015). “The Eyes of the Panther (Cryptofiction Classics - Weird Tales of Strange Creatures)”, p.20, Read Books Ltd

  28 Copy quote

  Show source

• The successful man will profit from his mistakes and try again in a different way.

  Dale Carnegie

  Inspirational, Motivational, Success

  162 Copy quote

• Personal initiative, competitive selection, the profit motive, corrected by failure and the infinite process of good housekeeping and the personal ingenuity-here constitute the life of a free society.

  Winston Churchill

  Infinite, Initiative, Process

  5 Copy quote

• We in America count on the profit motive to get people to do the right thing. That's our basic American notion when it comes to business.

  Chris Matthews

  America, People, Profit

  Source: www.nbcnews.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Remind people that profit is the difference between revenue and expense. This makes you look smart.

  Scott Adams

  Business, Smart, Differences

  56 Copy quote

• Profit in business comes from repeat customers

  W. Edwards Deming

  Loyal Customers, Focus In Business, Great Customer Service

  11 Copy quote

• When shallow critics denounce the profit motive inherent in our system of private enterprise, they ignore the fact that it is an economic support of every human right we possess and without it, all rights would disappear.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  Rights, Support, Facts

  9 Copy quote

• The profit motive, when it is the sole basis of an economic system, encourages a cutthroat competition and selfish ambition that inspires men to be more concerned about making a living than making a life.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Selfish, Ambition, Men

  Martin Luther King Jr. (1963). “Strength to Love”

  20 Copy quote

  Show source

• The profit motive promotes economic growth by creating better products at cheaper prices.

  Mark Skousen

  Creating, Growth, Economic

  Mark Skousen (2013). “Economic Logic Fourth Edition”, p.674, Regnery Publishing

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Most of Marx's predictions have failed to materialize, and his labor theory of value and other ideas have been proven wrong. Marx failed to recognize the incentive system built into the capitalist model - consumer choice and the profit motive of the entrepreneur. The irony is that capitalism, not socialism or Marxism, that has liberated the worker from the chains of poverty, monopoly, war, and oppression, and has better achieved Marx's vision of a millennium of hope, peace, abundance, leisure, and aesthetic expression for the 'full' human being.

  Mark Skousen

  War, Expression, Ideas

  10 Copy quote

• The profit motive, indecorous though it may seem, may represent the best chance the poor have to reap some of globalization's benefits.

  James Surowiecki

  Benefits, May, Chance

  "Penny-Wise" by James Surowiecki, www.newyorker.com. September 27, 2004.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• People instinctively know the difference between something done with a profit motive and something done with a love motive.

  Philip Yancey

  Differences, People, Done

  Philip Yancey (2010). “What Good is God?: On the Road with Stories of Grace”, p.287, Hachette UK

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Economists talk about profit motive, but nothing motivates modern man more than a chance to avoid taxes!

  Peter Drucker

  Men, Chance, Modern

  4 Copy quote

• I don't see much of a future for this planet. I think it's a cursed planet. The boundaries we've drawn between nations and the profit motive - those two factors have, in my opinion, brought us to the point where almost nothing can stop the utter destruction of the environment and all our earthly life-support systems.

  George Carlin

  Thinking, Two, Support Systems

  Interview with Sam Merrill, reprints.longform.org. January 1982.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• The experience of the past lives little doubt that every economic system must sooner or later rely upon some form of the profit motive to stir individuals and groups to productivity. Substitutes like slavery, police supervision, or ideological enthusiasm prove too unproductive, too expensive, or too transient.

  Will Durant

  Past, Rely Upon, Police

  12 Copy quote

• Capitalism is not about the profit motive. Capitalism is about free markets. What you do in the market, in your free will, is the essence of capitalism.

  Muhammad Yunus

  Essence, Free Will, Profit

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• I'm against the theory of the multinational corporations who say if you are
  against hunger you must be for GMO. That's wrong, there is plenty of
  natural, normal good food in the world to nourish the double of humanity.
  There is absolutely no justification to produce genetically modified food
  except the profit motive and the domination of the multinational
  corporations.

  Jean Ziegler

  Gmos, Humanity, World

  13 Copy quote

• Turning corporations loose and letting the profit motive run amok is not a prescription for a more livable world.

  Tom Scholz

  Letting Go, Running, World

  7 Copy quote

• [There is] a strange split in thinking common to those on the religious left, who are quick to denounce the profit motive and commercialism. Yet, they seem to think that the key to happiness is giving people more stuff - by enlisting the coercive power of government. This perverse way of thinking holds that 'social justice' demands that we take money from those who have earned it and give it to those who have less of it. That's not social justice; that's materialism.

  Robert Sirico

  Religious, Thinking, Keys

  14 Copy quote

• Money is an instrumentality of the profit motive and must be issued and backed only by private enterprisers. Economic and political perversities are inescapable while government is admitted to money power. Since all national governments have, up to the present, been money issuing powers we may justly attribute all the economic and political ills of mankind to this single error.

  E.C. Riegel

  Government, Errors, Political

  4 Copy quote

• There is plenty of room to make a profit in a zero-carbon economy; but the profit motive is not going to be the midwife for that great transformation.

  Naomi Klein

  Zero, Rooms, Transformation

  Naomi Klein (2014). “This Changes Everything: Capitalism Vs. The Climate”, p.252, Simon and Schuster

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Ultimately we must concern ourselves with pulling out by its roots the decadence that controls our culture, the profit motive that controls our culture.

  Jane Fonda

  Roots, Culture, Decadence

  8 Copy quote