#bus

Grandpa Martin Vanderhoff: Penny, why don't you write a play about Ism-Mania? Penny Sycamore: Ism-Mania? Grandpa Martin Vanderhoff: Yeah, sure, you know, Communism, Faschism, Voodoo-ism, everybody's got an -ism these days. Penny Sycamore: Oh [laughs] Penny Sycamore: I thought it was some kind of itch or something. Grandpa Martin Vanderhoff: Well, it's just as catching. When things go a little bad nowadays, you go out, get yourself an -ism and you're in business. ↗

— George S. Kaufman

#business

The closest most people have ever come to understanding what an investment banker does may have been on October 24, 1995, when they heard the outrageous special interest story of the day. The wire services released the story first. It was quickly picked up and parroted by almost every major media outlet in the country as a classic example of Wall Street excess. A fifty-eight-year-old frustrated managing director from Trust Company of the West, on an airplane trip from Buenos Aires to New York City, downed an excessive number of cocktails, got out of his seat in the first-class cabin of a United Airlines flight, dropped his pants, and took a crap on the service cart. There you have it. That’s what bankers do: consume, process, and disseminate. ↗

— Peter Troob

#business

The words of the social critic Eric Hoffer were ringing true: "Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and turns into a racket. ↗

— Christopher McDougall

#business

They have to say SOMETHING. Maria Bartiromo can't exactly look into the camera and say that the Dow is down half a percent today because of random Brownian motion. ↗

— Philip M. Rosenzweig

#science #business

Living your life is a long and doggy business. . . . And stories and books help. Some help you with the living itself. Some help you just take a break. The best do both at the same time. ↗

— Anne Fine

#stories #business

Make your customers comfortable and they will give you their lives. ↗

— Paul Orfalea

#customer-service #business

It was puzzling to own trees - they were not owned the way a business os owned or even a house is owned. If anything, they were held in trust. In trust. Yes, for all of posterity,... ↗

— Philip Roth

#business

Enron was becoming a virtual cult of creativity, often placing swagger over substance. New ideas were celebrated for their newness, for their potential; tried and true businesses like the pipelines were almost derided. ↗

— Kurt Eichenwald

#business

Excuse me, Ben," Bowen said. "Am I wrong, or aren't you the corporate treasurer?" Glisan bristled. "Yes." "What do you mean, you think you can get one?" Bowen shot back. "This is the current fucking maturities schedule! Go get it. You have to have a maturities schedule!" But they didn't. With all the focus on deals and earnings- with finance group's transformation into a profit center rather than a division to support the business- the workday, boring details had been sloughed off. p. 560 ↗

— Kurt Eichenwald

#business

I knew nothing. Now I've seen what a raw deal lots of other people like Krystal get. And it's not their fault. Not their choice. People don't get to choose what body they're put into. Like, people get born into bodies in the middle of a genocide war in Darfur, and they don't get to worry about how tall they are or whether they'll ever be able to row. They're too busy worrying about how they're going to stay alive for another day. ↗

— Maureen Garvie

#business