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.

topic: Inspiring, Rights, Racism, Profit Motive, Militarism

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

- W. Edwards Deming

topic: Inspirational, Business, Profit, Customer Experience, Inspirational Customer Service

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

- Ambrose Bierce

topic: Inspirational, Sarcastic, Business, Individual Responsibility, Ingenious

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

- Dale Carnegie

topic: Inspirational, Motivational, Success, Making Mistakes And Learning From Them, Try Again

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

topic: Infinite, Initiative, Process, Profit Motive, Good Housekeeping

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

topic: America, People, Profit, Profit Motive

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

- Scott Adams

topic: Business, Smart, Differences, Profit Motive

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

topic: Rights, Support, Facts, Private Enterprise, Profit Motive

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.

topic: Selfish, Ambition, Men, Profit Motive, Selfish Ambition

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

- Mark Skousen

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

topic: Creating, Growth, Economic, Profit Motive

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

topic: War, Expression, Ideas, Proven Wrong, Consumer Choice

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

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

topic: Benefits, May, Chance, Profit Motive

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

- Philip Yancey

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

topic: Differences, People, Done, Profit Motive

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

- Peter Drucker

topic: Men, Chance, Modern, Modern Man, Profit Motive

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

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

topic: Thinking, Two, Support Systems, Profit Motive

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

topic: Past, Police, Doubt, Unproductive, Profit Motive

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

source: Source: www.guernicamag.com

topic: Essence, Free Will, Profit, Profit Motive

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

source: "The global power shift". TED conference, www.ted.com. December 2011.

topic: Gmos, Humanity, World, Multinational Corporations, Profit Motive

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

- Tom Scholz

topic: Letting Go, Running, Corporations, Profit Motive

[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

topic: Religious, Thinking, Government, Commercialism, Profit Motive

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

topic: Errors, Government, Political, Money Power, Perversity

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

topic: Zero, Rooms, Transformation, Profit Motive

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

topic: Roots, Culture, Decadence, Profit Motive

That, to me, is a kind of brilliant environmental ju-jitsu - using the energy of the market and the profit-motive to get businesses to invest in preserving and improving natural systems.

- Ramez Naam

topic: Environmental, Energy, Brilliant, Profit Motive

However much we might deplore the profit motive, or consumerist values, if everyone just wants i-Pods we would probably be better off than if they wanted class revolution.

- Steven Pinker

topic: Class, Want, Might, Profit Motive

The profit motive is not only fundamental to our ability to reward shareholders and pay employees; it's fundamental to excellent journalism. Far from corrupting the craft, profits enhance it. Expansion drives diversity and diversity protects and strengthens our craft.

- Lachlan Murdoch

topic: Diversity, Crafts, Pay, Profit Motive

People ask me: ‘What is punk? How do you define punk?' Here's how I define punk: It's a free space. It could be called jazz. It could be called hip-hop. It could be called blues, or rock, or beat. It could be called techno. It's just a new idea. For me, it was punk rock. That was my entrance to this idea of the new ideas being able to be presented in an environment that wasn't being dictated by a profit motive.

- Ian MacKaye

topic: Rocks, Ideas, Space, Profit Motive, Punk Rock

The problem isn't that conservatives are wrong about the efficiency of markets or the creativity of enterprise. It's that they have made false idols of both, usually without acknowledging that markets work best when well regulated, that private enterprise cannot meet every human need, that government has always played a critical role in our economy, and that the profit motive can be socially and environmentally destructive as well as dynamic.

- Joe Conason

topic: Creativity, Idols, Government, Profit Motive, Human Needs

We do a lot of things for reasons besides profit motive. We want to leave the world better than we found it.

- Tim Cook

source: "Why Tim Cook Doesn't Care About 'The Bloody ROI'" by Steve Denning, www.forbes.com. March 7, 2014.

topic: World, Want, Reason, Profit Motive

A business society, therefore, always has in its children a large group of individuals who cannot make money and who do not understand (or want to understand) the profit motive. In short, they are subversives ...

- Margaret Halsey

topic: Children, Business, Groups, Large Groups, Profit Motive

It is the media that controls the boundaries of what is politically permissible, so better to change the media. Profit motives work against it, but if we can have the audience understand that most other forms of journalism are not credible, then it may be a forced move.

- Julian Assange

source: "The Whistleblower - Live Online Chat". Interview with Mark Davis, www.sbs.com.au. May 16, 2010.

topic: Moving, Media, May, Profit Motive