Work and Profession
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Economic, financial, and political predictors . . . are quite ashamed to say anything outlandish to their clients—and yet events, it turns out, are almost always outlandish .
George Bernard Shaw
The man of business . . . goes on Sunday to the church with the regularity of the village blacksmith, there to renounce and abjure before his God the line of conduct which he intends to pursue with all his might during the following week.
Walter Scott
[ Of his need to raise money to pay huge debts by writing :] My own right hand shall do it.
Joseph Schumpeter
The opening up of new markets, foreign or domestic, and the organizational development from the craft shop and factory to such concerns as U.S. Steel illustrate the same process of industrial mutation . . . that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within , incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one. This process of Creative Destruction is the essential fact about capitalism.
Theodore Roosevelt
To borrow a simile from the football field, we believe that men must play fair, but that there must be no shirking, and that the success can only come to the player who “hits the line hard.”
Theodore Roosevelt
Criticism is necessary and useful; it is often indispensable; but it can never take the place of action, or be even a poor substitute for it. The function of the mere critic is of very subordinate usefulness. It is the doer of deeds who actually counts in the battle for life, and not the man who looks on and says how the fight ought to be fought, without himself sharing the stress and the danger.
Theodore Roosevelt
The man who really counts in the world is the doer, not the mere critic, the man who actually does the work, even if roughly and imperfectly, not the man who only talks or writes about how it ought to be done.
Laurence J. Peter
The work is done by people who have not yet attained final placement at their level of incompetence.
Laurence J. Peter
Every post tends to be occupied by an employee incompetent to execute its duties.
George Orwell
I shall never again think that all tramps are drunken scoundrels, nor expect a beggar to be grateful when I give him a penny, nor be surprised if men out of work lack energy, nor subscribe to the Salvation Army, nor pawn my clothes, nor refuse a handbill, nor enjoy a meal at a smart restaurant.
Richard Nixon
[ Remark to General Alexander Haig, 7 Aug. 1974 :] You fellows, in your business, have a way of handling problems like this. Somebody leaves a pistol in the drawer. I don’t have a pistol.
Benito Mussolini
[ To a railway stationmaster :] We must leave exactly on time. . . . From now on everything must function to perfection.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
The two valets sit at the top of the table, but at least I have the honor of being placed above the cooks.
Ludwig von Mises
Everybody thinks of economics whether he is aware of it or not. In joining a political party and in casting his ballot, the citizen implicitly takes a stand upon essential economic theories.
Arthur Miller
For a salesman, there is no rock bottom to the life. He don’t put a bolt to a nut, he don’t tell you the law or give you medicine. He’s a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine. And when they start not smiling back—that’s an earthquake.
Karl Marx
The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his “natural superiors,” and has left remaining no other bond between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous “cash payment.”
Karl Marx
[The effect of capitalist development is to] distort the worker into a fragment of a man, . . . degrade him to the level of an appendage of a machine, they destroy the actual content of his labor by turning it into a torment.
Groucho Marx
[ Groucho Marx, replying to the comment, “You’re awfully shy for a lawyer” :] You bet I’m shy. I’m a shyster lawyer.
