Dave Eggers Quotes

We have our factory, which is called a stage. We make a product, we color it, we title it and we ship it out in cans.

Our marine terminals are invaluable commerce infrastructure, not only to our country but also for the many foreign manufacturers who sell primarily in the U.S. market.

It has always been my dream to work for a manufacturer team.

The number of parts that were required were just prohibitive.

Great businesses can be built on scale. I think Amazon has built a phenomenal commerce business largely on scale. Their network effect isn't obvious to me, but boy, have they used scale effectively.

Only now did I recognize the reciprocal relationship which exits between manufacturing power and the national system of transportation, and that the one can never develop to its fullest without the other.

Trade isn't about goods. Trade is about information. Goods sit in the warehouse until information moves them.

The center of gravity for an organization should be as close to what they make as possible. If you make cars, you need people in the factory. If you breed horses, be in the stable. If you make the Internet, live on the Internet, and use all the freedom and power it gives you.

I'm doing my best whether it's for a hundred-copy print run or for a hundred thousand.

I am an industry.

The inventory goes down the elevator every night.

I hope to be the go-to person on international trade and industry. I think no one before me or after me will ever have so much knowledge about America's ports.

In a company, you buy thousands of things. Every item you buy has its own footprint.

Thank you, hard taco shells, for surviving the long journey from factory, to supermarket, to my plate and then breaking the moment I put something inside you. Thank you.

How could I make a little book, when I have seen enough to make a dozen large books?

In the case of Apple, they did originally do production internally, but then along came unbelievably good outsourced manufacturing from companies like Foxconn. We don't have that in the rocket business. There's no Foxconn in the rocket business.

Publishing in a way doesn't have a lot to do with writing, and writing doesn't have a lot to do with publishing.

Making books is hard work. Some books are, of course, more demanding than others.

We live in such a service-based, globalised economy where very few people actually make anything and the people who do make stuff... it's all part of a massive global supply chain. So what if all those chains were suddenly cut, how would you make something? How would you keep people alive? And that was something I wanted to explore.

I realized early on, maybe better than some of my competitors did, that a textile business can run only if you have scale. I decided to horizontally and vertically integrate, adding everything from spinning, dyeing, weaving, and stitching to processing and packing.

Ninety percent of what we wear, we eat, we consume is carried by ships... Container ships carry a vast amount of stuff.

The biggest part of our business has always been moving things, not paper. With the Internet, people in Mississippi can buy things from Macedonia, without regard to time or place or quantity.

I have to have the cotton candy shipped in.

America's answer! : Production.

The people of this country have been erroneously encouraged to believe that they could keep on increasing the output of farm and factory indefinitely and that some magician would find ways and means for that increased output to be consumed with reasonable profit to the producer.