Conrad Black Quotes

My only loyalty is to what's best for business, not to any set of constituents.

Those people are unabashedly ruthless as far as money is concerned.

This man [Aaron Burr] has no principles, public or private. As a politician, his sole spring of action is an inordinate ambition.

The public be damned. What does the public care for railroads except to get as much out of them for as small a consideration as possible? I don't take any stock in this silly nonsense about working for anybody's good but our own, because we are not. When we make a move, we do it because it is in our interest to do so, and not because we expect to do somebody else good.

If you talk to most businessmen, they'll say that what they do is for the public good, but you know they're just greedy, and consumers are just consuming for the sake of their own greed.

Those who joined us for selfish personal reasons, for a career or other motives will be the ones to leave.

I'm not interested in business for business's sake.

Determination becomes obsession and then it becomes all that matters.

I loved Internet businesses, having built and sold one. And I loved the financial business, despite the fact that it was almost all a scam.

Business is a very beautiful mechanism to solve problems, but we never use it for that purpose. We only use it to make money. It satisfies our selfish interest but not our collective interest.

It's when someone has an agenda of their own for the record that it doesn't work for me.

By its very nature, hard-line ideology is self-serving and self-perpetuating; its primary goal is to survive - and that precludes everything.

I did what I felt, and I felt what I did, at all costs.

Zealots often carry the day.

Ambition is pitiless. Any merit that it cannot use it finds despicable.

I feel like a lot of people would quite easily stab you in the back once they get what they want. And you see that in people.

Theodore betrays his friends for his own ambition.

We have come to see him as not vital but violent, not clever but devious, not shrewd but cynical.

vested interest

The word that comes closest to describing him for me is fanatic.

We corrupt the word of truth, and mix ... our doctrine with what is common and cheap... in order to turn the adulteration to our profit, and accommodate ourselves to those who meet us, and curry favor with everyone, becoming ventriloquists and chatterers, who serve their own pleasures by words uttered from the earth, and sinking into the earth, and, to gain the special good will of the multitude

… a brilliant but dangerous megalomaniac who is likely to pursue his own aims in disregard of U.S. interests

Greed has been severely underestimated and denigrated—unfairly so in my opinion. … there's nothing wrong with avarice as a motive as long as it doesn't lead to dishonest … conduct.

Here is a company that is a traitor!!

They could care less about the public. The public comes in third. Number one is keeping their power. Number two are the special interests, the people footing the bill. Finally, the public good might be third — if they can profit from it. If there's no profit, they could care less.