Steve Martin Quotes

Before Enron, I think people were a bit more naive about the way things worked, and I think Enron pulled the curtain back on unsavoury practices that turned out to be a lot more widespread.

People are treating the Stewart case as seriously as Enron when it's really over trivia.

All the good work in the world will not compensate for the damage that a single facet of the business, or a rogue individual, can do. Insider trading, environmental damage, human-rights violations, and opportunistic practices erode trust and result in net negative impact.

While short sellers probably will never be popular on Wall Street, they often are the ones wearing the white hats when it comes to looking for and identifying the bad guys!

I happen to represent Enron here in Houston. We have many good corporate citizens here in Houston. Enron happened to have been one.

Lots of businesses built in the early 1990s were not very transparent, not only by Russians, but also by foreigners.

'Power Play' is a morality tale for our post-Enron world and - not incidentally - wildly entertaining. Nothing wrong with that.

It took a generation for companies to recognise their responsibilities in terms of labour practices and another generation for them to recognise their environmental obligations.

It should be as much the aim of those who seek social betterment to rid the business world of crimes of cunning as to rid the entire body politic of crimes of violence.

If it were not for government regulation of big corporations, executives at companies like Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, they could have cheated investors out of millions.

The Enron scandal is worthy of the highest level of scrutiny, both because of the enormity of the crimes that may have been committed and because of what the largest bankruptcy in American history has already begun to reveal about the weaknesses in our nation's corporate structures and regulatory oversight.

The collapse of Enron and the subsequent collapse of Arthur Andersen were tremendous tragedies. But as I stated at the time of my indictment on July 8, 2004, failure does not equate to a crime.

I predict that in the years ahead Enron, not Sept. 11, will come to be seen as the greater turning point in U.S. society.

Bernie Ebbers and Ken Lay were caricatures - they were easy to spot. They were almost psychopaths. But it's much harder to spot problems at companies like Royal Dutch [Shell].

No bank, banking association or trust company … shall have as a director or other officer or employee any private banker or any director or other officer or employee of any other bank, banking association, or trust company located in the same place

We mean to make little business big, and all business honest, instead of striving to make Big Business little, and yet letting it remain dishonest.

If our great corporations would more scrupulously observe their legal limitations and duties, they would have less cause to complain of the unlawful limitations of their rights or of violent interference with their operations.

All businesses that create wealth, pay their taxes and comply with the law are, by definition, good companies.

Anything that benefits workers, the environment, or the general population is going to reduce their [the corporation’s] profits.

There's a myth out there that you have to genuflect at the altar of quarterly earnings. But it's a false choice that you can either be a good fiduciary or promote values such as environmental sustainability.

Ken Lay, the disgraced former chairman of Enron, found a way to escape his legal problems: He died after being convicted of fraud and conspiracy charges.

Apple exists as a corporate entity with the protections provided by U.S. laws, but it cannot be allowed to pick and choose when to abide by those laws as it sees fit.

In the business world, we can point to instances when a lack of integrity has bankrupted entire companies - in sectors as different as finance, telecommunications, manufacturing, and energy.

I think it's a mistake for the American public to constantly be told that if you work for an oil company or you work for a bank, that automatically makes you bad. I think a lot of these people are very qualified people who are patriots. They're going to want to help the country.

Our laws demand that a corporation have a fiduciary responsibility with shareholders to maximize profits. They are legally required to make as much money as possible, any way possible within 'the law.'