19th-century Businessman Quotes

Horticulture, for its proper advancement and full development, seems necessarily to be as international in its character as are the finances of the world.

Washington Atlee Burpee

Chemical engineering more than any other, may be called the engineering of the future. It is the result of an evolution in which most of the other branches have played a part... The chemical engineer stands today on the threshold of a vast virgin realm; in it lie the secrets of life and prosperity for mankind in the future of the world.

John Hays Hammond

The common impression regards this scale or chain merely as a "type" of organization, characteristic only of the vaster institutions of government, army, church and industry. This impression is erroneous. It is likewise misleading, for it seems to imply that the scalar chain in organization lacks universality. These great organizations differ from others only in that the chain is longer. The truth is that wherever we find an organization even of two people, related as superior and subordinate, we have the scalar principled.

James D. Mooney

Lo where the stage, the poor, degraded stage,
Holds its warped mirror to a gaping age.

Charles Sprague

There is no such thing in the world as luck. There never was a man who could go out in the morning and find a purse full of gold in the street to-day, and another to-morrow, and so on, day after day: He may do so once in his life; but so far as mere luck is concerned, he is as liable to lose it as to find it.

There is no doubt that the efficiency of the Works at Bournville is assisted by the Suggestion Scheme, and it has been found that the good accomplished, is not only in the pecuniary value to the Firm or to the suggestor, but also in the development of the mental and creative power, which makes both men and girls more efficient and valuable workers, and fosters an intelligent independence.

As in the piling up of hypothetical alternatives, creative accidents follow the law of probabilities the more we fish, the more likely we are to get a strike.

Alex Faickney Osborn

When the outlook is steeped in pessimism, I remind myself, "Two and two still make four, and you can't keep humankind down for long."

A low morality will not sustain leadership long, its influence quickly vanishes, it cannot produce its own succession.

Chester Barnard

On March 4th, 1830, I arrived in London, where a new world seemed opened to me.

Equal rights for all civilized men south of the Zambesi.

Some technical reports are so dry and dusty... that if you put a pile of them in a hydraulic press and apply millions of pounds of pressure to it, not a drop of juice will run out.

Charles Kettering

You can not have omelettes without breaking eggs; you can not destroy the practises of barbarism, of slavery, of superstition, which for centuries have desolated the interior of Africa, without the use of force; but if you will fairly contrast the gain to humanity with the price which we are bound to pay for it, I think you may well rejoice in the result of such expeditions as those which have recently been conducted with such signal success in Nyassaland, Ashanti, Benin, and Nupé—expeditions which may have, and indeed have, cost valuable lives, but as to which we may rest assured that for one life lost a hundred will be gained, and the cause of civilization and the prosperity of the people will in the long run be eminently advanced.

Joseph Chamberlain

Premature wealth or position cannot be retained because it has not been earned; we get only what we give, and those who try to get without giving always find that the law of compensation is relentlessly bringing about an exact equilibrium.

Charles F. Haanel

Do not pursue money. He who pursues money will never achieve it. Serve! If you serve as best as you can, you will not be able to escape money.

Advanced engineering always, like advanced everything else, brings down upon it the discredit of ridicule of minds who cannot see so far.

Alfred P. Sloan

Hitler's mind was a deep-running river. You could never tell when something it had absorbed would bob to the surface again.

Ernst Hanfstaengl

The whole army is burning with an insatiable desire to wreak violence upon South Carolina. I almost tremble for her fate.

William Tecumseh Sherman

To remember a successful salad is generally to remember a successful dinner; at all events, the perfect dinner necessarily includes the perfect salad.

George Ellwanger

Budget thy expenses that thou mayest have coins to pay for thy necessities, to pay for thy enjoyments, and to gratify thy worthwhile desires without spending more than nine-tenths of thy earnings.

George Samuel Clason

For instance, let us say that a new stock has been listed in the last two or three years and its high was 20, or any other figure, and that such a price was made two or three years ago. If something favorable happens in connection with the company, and the stock starts upward, usually it is safe play to buy the minute it touches a brand new high.

Jesse Lauriston Livermore

How much can you depend on their loyalty? You can depend upon their loyalty as much as the Germans depended upon it in 1916.
And we're going to suffer the same fate as Germany suffered, and for the same reason.

Benjamin H. Freedman

"Research," he said, "is something that tells you that a jackass has two ears."

Healthy families are our greatest national resource.

Edwin Gould, Sr.

Not only does a bureaucracy tend to under-government in point of quality; it tends to over-government in point of quantity.