If deceiving the eye were the only *business* of the art, there is no doubt, indeed, but the minute painter would be more apt to succeed; but it is not the eye, it is the mind, which the painter of genius desires to address; nor will he waste a moment upon those smaller objects, which only serve to catch the sense, to divide the attention, and to counteract his great design of speaking to the heart. —Joshua Reynolds, 1723 - 1792

I can't bear to face a camera. But I never brought anything to this business and I have no respect for acting. Maybe if I had learned something it would be different. But I never did anything to be proud of. —Ava Gardner, 1922 - 1990

That what is true of business and politics is gloriously true of the professions, the arts and crafts, the sciences, the sports. That the best picture has not yet been painted; the greatest poem is still unsung; the mightiest novel remains to be written; the divinest music has not been conceived even by Bach. In science, probably ninety-nine percent of the knowable has to be discovered. We know only a few streaks about astronomy. We are only beginning to imagine the force and composition of the atom. Physics has not yet found any indivisible matter, or psychology a sensible soul. —Lincoln Steffens, 1866 - 1936

I'm the luckiest old broad on two feet because my life is divided absolutely in half - half animals and half show business. You can't ask for better than two things you love the most. —Betty White

There's no point in going into business unless you do it out of frustration. I'm sure Steve Jobs must have felt, I can do that better. —Richard Branson

My own business always bores me to death. I prefer other people's. —Oscar Wilde, 1854 - 1900

I'm not asking any of you to make drastic changes to every single one of your recipes or to totally change the way you do business. But what I am asking is that you consider reformulating your menu in pragmatic and incremental ways to create healthier versions of the foods that we all love. —Michelle Obama

Economic power is exercised by means of a positive, by offering men a reward, an incentive, a payment, a value; political power is exercised by means of a negative, by the threat of punishment, injury, imprisonment, destruction. The businessman's tool is values; the bureaucrat's tool is fear. —Ayn Rand, 1905 - 1982

Why should we tell kidnappers, murderers, and embezzlers their rights? If they don't know their rights, they shouldn't be in the business. —Pat Paulsen, 1927 - 1997

The Circumlocution Office was (as everybody knows without being told) the most important Department under Government. No public business of any kind could possibly be done at any time without the acquiescence of the Circumlocution Office. Its finger was in the largest public pie, and in the smallest public tart. It was equally impossible to do the plainest right and to undo the plainest wrong without the express authority of the Circumlocution Office. —Charles Dickens, 1812 - 1870

Every young man would do well to remember that all successful business stands on the foundation of morality. —Henry Ward Beecher, 1813 - 1887

I remember that a wise friend of mine did usually say, 'That which is everybody's business is nobody's business.' - Izaak Walton, 1593 - 1683

Because this business of becoming conscious, of being a writer, is ultimately about asking yourself, How alive am I willing to be? - Anne Lamott

One thing you will note about shopping-center theory is that you could have thought of it yourself, and a course in it will go a long way toward dispelling the notion that business proceeds from mysteries too recondite for you and me. —Joan Didion

I must create a system or be enslaved by another man's. I will not reason and compare; My business is to create. —William Blake, 1757 - 1827

Islam is my religion, but I believe my religion is my personal business. It governs my personal life, my personal morals. And my religious philosophy is personal between me and the God in whom I believe; just as the religious philosophy of these others is between them and the God in whom they believe. And this is best this way. Were we to come out here discussing religion, we'd have too many differences from the outstart and we could never get together. —Malcolm X, 1925 - 1965

I believe that being successful means having a balance of success stories across the many areas of your life. You can't truly be considered successful in your business life if your home life is in shambles. —Zig Ziglar, 1926 - 2012

With respect to Committees as you would perceive I am very jealous of their formation. I mean working committees. I think business is always better done by few than by many. I think also the working few ought not to be embarassed by the idle many and further I think the idle many ought not to be honoured by association with the working few. - I do not think that my patience has ever come nearer to an end than when compelled to hear ... long rambling malapropros enquiries of members who still have nothing in consequence to propose that shall advance the business. —Michael Faraday, 1791 - 1867

I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious. —Albert Einstein 1879-1955

The people who built Silicon Valley were engineers. They learned business, they learned a lot of different things, but they had a real belief that humans, if they worked hard with other creative, smart people, could solve most of humankind's problems. I believe that very much. —Steve Jobs, 1955 - 2011

If travel were so inspiring and informing a business ... then the wisest men in the world would be deck hands on tramp steamers, Pullman porters, and Mormon missionaries. —Sinclair Lewis, 1885 - 1951

Government is the people's business and every man, woman and child becomes a shareholder with the first penny of tax paid. —Ronald Reagan, 1911 - 2004

When I first started, there was this guy who was really powerful in this business. He told me, we're making disposable art. And I thought to myself, whoa. Maybe that's what you're making, but that's not what I'm making. —Cyndi Lauper

Never bend your head. Always hold it high. Look the world straight in the face. —Helen Keller, 1880-1968

Big oil, big steel, big agriculture avoid the open marketplace. Big corporations fix prices among themselves and thus drive out of business the small entrepreneur. Also, in their conglomerate form, the huge corporations have begun to challenge the very legitimacy of the state. —Gore Vidal, 1925 - 2012

A doctor is advertised by the bodies he cures. My business is advertised by the minds I stimulate. And let me tell you that the book business is different from other trades. People don't know they want books. I can see just by looking at you that your mind is ill for lack of books but you are blissfully unaware of it! - Christopher Morley, 1890 - 1957

I have a very full life and I am very happy with where I am now. I don't want to change anything. I once wanted to have children and it was not my choice not to have children but it hasn't broken my heart that I haven't. I think unless you're truly, wholeheartedly prepared to make a full-time commitment, you have to really think about it. I certainly wouldn't adopt children just because everybody in show business seems to be doing it. —Anjelica Huston

Manage your energy, not your time. —Tony Schwartz (CEO, theenergyproject)

It may seem paradoxical to say that there are similarities between a poetical and a commercial mind, but it is a fact that both a poet and a businessman are constantly dealing with problems that are directly related to people and for which sensitivity is of prime importance. The business-like mind is sometimes described as being cold, sober, calculating, hard; but perhaps these are simply qualities that are necessary for dealing with people if one wants to achieve anything. One is always concerned with the mysterious, incalculable, dark, hidden aspects for which there is no easy formula, but which form essentially the same human element as that which inspires the poet. —M. C. Escher, 1898 - 1972

The function of the artist is to provide what life does not. —Tom Robbins

The business of art is to reveal the relation between man and his environment. —D. H. Lawrence, 1885 - 1930

It is the business of the future to be dangerous; and it is among the merits of science that it equips the future for its duties. —Alfred North Whitehead, 1861 - 1947

Victory after all, I suppose! Well, it seems a very gloomy business. —J. R. R. Tolkien, 1892 - 1973

We have to make America the best place in the world to do business. —Dick Cheney

The business of Democrats being liberal and Republicans being conservative didn't quite apply back then. People had warm sentiments towards Democrats because of the social programmes they had introduced in the 1930s. The new deal had brought rural electricity and social security. The Republicans had fought these changes every step of the way. They have always been a party to protect the rich and powerful. The Democrats, put simply, helped poor people. And that was us. —John Grisham

The time to relax is when you don’t have time for it. —Sydney J. Harris 1917-1986

One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star. —Friedrich Nietzsche 1844-1900

The most successful businessman is the man who holds onto the old just as long as it is good, and grabs the new just as soon as it is better. —Robert P. Vanderpoel

The world is still the world according to the New York Times business section. It's all about mergers, the Dow. But there's a movement coming. And capitalism is definitely shaky now. It's shaky because it's based on insatiable desires in a biologically limited world. —Jerry Brown

The main business of a lawyer is to take the romance, the mystery, the irony, the ambiguity out of everything he touches. —Antonin Scalia

Few people do business well who do nothing else. —Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield, 1694 - 1773

There is no such thing as success in a bad business. —Elbert Hubbard, 1856 - 1915

Everybody kisses everybody else in this crummy business all the time. It's the kissiest business in the world. —Ava Gardner, 1922 - 1990

I don't think meals have any business being deductible. I'm for separation of calories and corporations. —Ralph Nader

A merchant who approaches business with the idea of serving the public well has nothing to fear from the competition. —James Cash Penney, 1875 - 1971

Gluttony is the vice of feeble minds. The gourmand has his brains in his palate, he can do nothing but eat; he is so stupid and incapable that the table is the only place for him, and dishes are the only things he knows anything about. Let us leave him to this business without regret; it is better for him and for us. —Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1712 - 1778

It is failure that guides evolution; perfection provides no incentive for improvement, and nothing is perfect. —Colson Whitehead

No matter how much a man can do, no matter how engaging his personality may be, he will not advance far in business if he cannot work through others. —John Craig

This is a trading world and men, women, and children, who cannot live on gravity alone, need something to satisfy their gayer, lighter moods and hours, and he who ministers to this want is in a business established by the Author of our nature. —P. T. Barnum, 1810 - 1891

I like to fight poverty. For almost 10 years, I've been using in my sermons the message that fighting poverty is good business, and I've used Wal-Mart as an example. The question is, how do you fight poverty, with high wages or low prices? The answer is both. —Andrew Young

Handling the [Billie] Holiday and [Charlie] Parker estates taught me more than I was really ready for about government and business delinquency and the hostility and helplessness of the courts. Not only was I not earning a decent living, there began to be a serious question in my mind whether practicing law could ever be an effective means of changing society or even of simple resistance to oppression. —Florynce Kennedy, 1916 - 2000

Information technology and business are becoming inextricably interwoven. I don't think anybody can talk meaningfully about one without the talking about the other. —Bill Gates

Some critics have occasionally suggested that I impose on characters certain possibilities of thought or language or emotional experience, which that particular character, or to put it more gruesomely, those kinds of characters wouldn't likely be able to think or talk about. But my attitude is that there are no such things as kinds or types of characters in fiction or in life. Eloquence or penetrating understanding can visit anybody. In fact, it's fiction's business to try to enlarge our understanding of and sympathy for people. If to do that I have to strain your conventional understanding about humans - well that's also art's proper business and my hope is that I'll repay your indulgence. —Richard Ford

I'm in the acting business. That's the ego business. When you get offers, the way things are going now you've gotta enjoy it. You've gotta take time to taste it, and appreciate it and make the most of it. Those offers aren't going to come around all the time. By the time I'm 100... —Betty White

What shall a man do with a sublime tier of moral faculties, when the most profitable business out of his port is the slave trade? So it was in Newport in those days. —Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1811 - 1896

Anybody in the creative business, as you might call it, has some sense of guilt about fooling around with fact, that you're commiting larceny, that all of life is material for your fabulations. —John le Carr√©

In fact men will fight for a superstition quite as quickly as for a living truth - often more so, since a superstition is so intangible you cannot get at it to refute it, but truth is a point of view, and so is changeable. —Hypatia 350-415

If you have to fight a crowd of boys, it's best to go for the biggest one. That way you won't have to fight them all. The others will see that you mean business and you will win their respect. —Suzanne Vega

The CIA is made up of boys whose families sent them to Princeton but wouldn't let them into the family brokerage business. —Lyndon Baines Johnson, 1908 - 1973

A man to carry on a successful business must have imagination. He must see things as in a vision, a dream of the whole thing. —Charles M. Schwab, 1862 - 1939

At five minutes to eleven on the morning named he was at the station, a false beard and spectacles shielding his identity from the public eye. If you had asked him he would have said that he was a Scotch business man. As a matter a fact, he looked far more like a motor-car coming through a haystack. —P. G. Wodehouse, 1881 - 1975

You work like hell to get yourself ahead in the business. You could go anywhere before, and suddenly you can't go anywhere. It's like being a cartoon character. —Robert Redford

Where you start is not as important as where you finish. —Zig Ziglar, 1926-2012

Publishing is a business, but journalism never was and is not essentially a business. Nor is it a profession. —Henry Luce, 1898 - 1967

Disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business. —Tom Robbins

By whatever means it is accomplished, the prime business of a play is to arouse the passions of its audience so that by the route of passion may be opened up new relationships between a man and men, and between men and Man. Drama is akin to the other inventions of man in that it ought to help us to know more, and not merely to spend our feelings. —Arthur Miller, 1915 - 2005

They are made for life, not for thought. Yes, and he who thinks, what's more, he who makes thought his business, he may go far in it, but he has bartered the solid earth for the water all the same, and one day he will drown. —Hermann Hesse, 1877 - 1962

Frank W. Woolworth once told me that the turning-point in his career did not come until he was thrown flat on his back by illness. He was sure that his business would go to pieces during his long, enforced absence. Instead, he discovered that he had in his employ men who could overcome difficulties when given power to exercise initiative. After that Woolworth left many problems and difficulties to be solved by subordinates and turned his attention to big things. —B. C. Forbes, 1880 - 1954

To discover a Conception of the mind which will justly represent a train of observed facts is, in some measure, a process of conjecture, ... and the business of conjecture is commonly conducted by calling up before our minds several suppositions, selecting that one which most agrees with what we know of the observed facts. Hence he who has to discover the laws of nature may have to invent many suppositions before he hits upon the right one; and among the endowments which lead to his success, we must reckon that fertility of invention which ministers to him such imaginary schemes, till at last he finds the one which conforms to the true order of nature. —William Whewell, 1794 - 1866

Drive thy business, or it will drive thee. —Benjamin Franklin, 1706 - 1790

An actor who knows his business ought to be able to make the London telephone directory sound enthralling. —Donald Sinden

The chief business of the American people is business. —Calvin Coolidge, 1872 - 1933

I'm glad I won't be around much longer to see what they do with it. The men who control the big studios today are stock manipulators and bankers. They know nothing about our business. —John Wayne, 1907 - 1979

Swearing relieves the feelings - that is what swearing does. I explained this to my aunt on one occasion, but it didn't answer with her. She said I had no business to have such feelings. —Jerome K. Jerome, 1859 - 1927

Ours is a government of checks and balances. The Mafia and crooked businessmen make out checks, and the politicians and other compromised officials improve their bank balances. —Steve Allen, 1921 - 2000

Keeping a little ahead of conditions is one of the secrets of business, the trailer seldom goes far. —Charles M. Schwab, 1862 - 1939

I have a true aversion to teaching. The perennial business of a professor of mathematics is only to teach the ABC of his science; most of the few pupils who go a step further, and usually to keep the metaphor, remain in the process of gathering information, become only Halbwisser [one who has superficial knowledge of the subject], for the rarer talents do not want to have themselves educated by lecture courses, but train themselves. And with this thankless work the professor loses his precious time. —Carl Friedrich Gauss, 1777 - 1855

If the First Amendment means anything, it means that a state has no business telling a man, sitting alone in his house, what books he may read or what films he may watch. —Thurgood Marshall, 1908 - 1993

No great man ever complains of want of opportunity. —Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803-1882

Music will always find its way to us, with or without business, politics, religion, or any other bullshit attached. Music survives everything, and like God, it is always present. It needs no help, and suffers no hindrance. —Eric Clapton

Whenever you're sitting across from some important person, always picture him sitting there in a suit of long red underwear. That's the way I always operated in business. —Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr, 1888 - 1969

If you don't drive your business, you will be driven out of business. —B. C. Forbes, 1880 - 1954

One of the things you learn as an actor is that human beings are capable of almost anything. I'm sort of in the business of illustrating that fact. —John Lithgow

We must travel in the direction of our fear. —John Berryman

No matter what business you're in, you can't run in place or someone will pass you by. It doesn't matter how many games you've won. —Jim Valvano, 1946 - 1993

I did enjoy going to the day bicycle races with him. French sporting events had for me a special comical air that I enjoyed. We would collect a quantity of wine and cheeses and crunchy rolls, a pot of p√¢t√© and perhaps a cold chicken, and sit up in the gallery. Hem knew all the statistics and the names of the riders. His enthusiasm was catching, but he tended to make a business of it while I just liked to eat and drink and enjoy the show. —John Dos Passos, 1896 - 1970

I think I did have a reputation for being grumpy. I don't think I'm grumpy. I have opinions. I have an independent vision. I am a purposeful person. But on a daily basis, I think I'm other than grumpy. I think it is a case where I am coming to do business and not there just to be flattered and cajoled and used. —Harrison Ford

Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows: You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward‚Äîreversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know. —Michael Crichton, 1942 - 2008

A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people's business. —Eric Hoffer, 1902 - 1983

There's no business like show business, but there are several businesses like accounting. —David Letterman

The son will run away from the family not at eighteen but at twelve, emancipated by his gluttonous precocity; he will fly not to seek heroic adventures, not to deliver a beautiful prisoner from a tower, not to immortalize a garret with sublime thoughts, but to found a business, to enrich himself and to compete with his infamous papa. —Charles Baudelaire, 1821 - 1867

Success is finding, or making, that position which enables you to contribute to the world the very greatest services of which you are capable, through the diligent, persevering, resolute cultivation of all the faculties God has endowed you with, and doing it all with cheerfulness, scorning to allow difficulties or defeats to drive you to pessimism or despair. Success consists of being and doing, not simply accumulating. The businessman or business enterprise that aspires to win the highest recognition for success must distinguish himself or itself, not by the magnitude of the profits, but by the value of service performed. —B. C. Forbes, 1880 - 1954

Be silly. Be honest. Be kind. —Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803-1882

A little nonsense now and then, is cherished by the wisest men. —Roald Dahl 1916-1990

Madam, I may be President of the United States, but my private life is nobody's damn business. —Chester A. Arthur, 1829 - 1886

You can't build a reputation on what you are going to do. —Henry Ford, 1863-1947

It is not the business of the botanist to eradicate weeds. Enough for him if he can tell us just how fast they grow. —C. Northcote Parkinson, 1909 - 1993

What you do with your own Communists is your own business. They are Trotskyists anyway. If you must, shoot them, and if you can't handle them, I'll help you. —Joseph Stalin, 1879 - 1953

Develop a passion for learning. If you do, you will never cease to grow. —Anthony J. D'Angelo

You have to understand, I don't play golf for fun. It's my business. When the mailman starts delivering mail on his off day, that's when I'll start playing golf for the hell of it. I like to play in tournaments. There are many great courses around the world that I have never played that are next door to tournaments. I have not played them because I don't play for fun. —Lee Trevino

What one thing does the world need most today - apart, that is, from the all-inclusive thing we call righteousness? Aren't you inclined to agree that what this old world needs is just the art of being kind? Every time I visit a factory or any other large business concern, I find myself trying to diagnose whether the atmosphere is one of kindliness or the reverse. And somehow, if there is palpably lacking that spirit of kindness, the owners ... have fallen short of achieving 24-carat success no matter how imposing the financial balance sheet may be. —B. C. Forbes, 1880 - 1954

There are people who take rumors and embellish them in a way that can be devastating. And this pollution has to be eradicated by people in our business as best we can. —Bob Woodward

I personally never had the concern that the paper was going to go out of business. But it was obvious to me that we had a problem on the business side, the problem being structural: the way we worked together or, more accurately, the way we didn't work together. —Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, 1926 - 2012

What does the name Virgin mean? We are a company that likes to take on the giants. In too many businesses, these giants have had things their own way. We are going to have fun competing with them. —Richard Branson

Our men can't make this change from normal civilians into warriors and remain the same people ... the abnormal world they have been plunged into, the new philosophies they have had to assume or perish inwardly, the horrors and delights ... they are bound to be different people from those you sent away. They are rougher than when you knew them. Killing is a rough business. —Ernie Pyle, 1900 - 1945

There are two ways to extend a business. Take inventory of what you're good at and extend out from your skills. Or determine what your customers need and work backward, even if it requires learning new skills. Kindle is an example of working backward. —Jeff Bezos

All the public business in Congress now connects itself with intrigues, and there is great danger that the whole government will degenerate into a struggle of cabals. —John Quincy Adams, 1767 - 1848

I like Mr Gorbachev, we can do business together. —Margaret Thatcher, 1925 - 2013

When two men in business always agree, one of them is unnecessary. —William Wrigley Jr.

My costumes have become my trademark and trademarks are hard to come by in show business. —Liberace, 1919 - 1987

It's simply to say that managers and investors alike must understand that accounting numbers are the beginning, not the end, of business valuation. —Warren Buffett

Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work. —Stephen King

The catastrophe of the atomic bombs which shook men out of cities and businesses and economic relations, shook them also out of their old-established habits of thought, and out of the lightly held beliefs and prejudices that came down to them from the past. —H. G. Wells, 1866 - 1946

I was minding my own business when something says to me, "you ought to blow trumpet." I have just been trying ever since. —Miles Davis, 1926 - 1991