A. Ernest Fitzgerald Quotes

Budget drives everything that we do.

There is never a time in a company's history when cost control can be relegated to the back burner, but for a startup company, keeping costs low is a vital necessity.

If a manager can't control his costs, fire them.

I keep my overhead as low as I can.

In the private sector, you have a budget and you stick to it.

One of my main agenda right from the beginning has been cost rationalization, and we have done a lot of cost rationalization.

I try not to shoot unnecessarily or spend on extra expenses that normally happen on a film set - like actors' fees.

You can't compromise to keep the film in budget.

Be really good with budgets because they keep getting smaller.

Economy consists in a due and proper application of the means afforded according to the ability of the employer and the situation chosen; care being taken that the expenditure is prudently conducted.

Can there not be a limit to the fact that really you need to cut your cloth in accordance with what capabilities and finances you have?

Profit or perish... There are only two ways to make money: increase sales and decrease costs.

Business people do two things with their time fundamentally. The first is that they try to create sales, right? Revenue, key to business. But the other thing they devote their time to equally is cost containment. That is to say, how to not create jobs. Because the fewer jobs you can create for the revenue you create, the more profit you make.

Budgets are nothing if not statements of priorities.

The more you keep costs down, the more freedom you have creatively.

I've always worked very efficiently on small budgets, both in documentaries and in features.

Control your expenses better than your competition. This is where you can always find the competitive advantage.

You may think my business is to make appropriations, but it is not. It is to prevent their being made.

Budgets are not bottomless pits.

The only way to meet the situation [the financial crisis] is spend less money and to run the City of New York within the limits of our resources. Unless you do this, gentlemen, you will have a difficult problem confronting you by the end of this year and the taxpayers of 1922 and the years thereafter will have to pay the price of our present lack of prudence or our unwillingness to economize at the proper time.

A behemoth budget does not mean there is much discretion in allocating it.

Our wage freeze was vital to keep wages competitive with rival companies. I always try to communicate to our people that we can never make enough money. We can never make enough profit.

Sometimes you have to make tough decisions to hold the line on spending.

The first thing I control is the cost by not shooting for many days. It is not control, but somebody has to drive the whole thing. If I shoot unnecessary things, it will raise cost.

It's amazing how small business owners figure out how to stretch a dollar as far as they possibly can.