William Henry Vanderbilt Quotes

A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business.

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.

You know, in a business, you have to operate on the basis of voluntary investment by individuals in a cause. With government, there is no voluntary effort to invest capital. It's just taken and invested. And the same accountability is not at play. The same natural forces in the economy are not at play.

Profit is the concern of a little man.

What is price gouging and what is capitalism can sometimes be a fine line.

The building of the transcontinental railroads resulted in an orgy of political corruption. The public lands and the natural resources of coal, of iron, and of timber were lavishly wasted in the great scramble for wealth and material power. The carnival of waste and plunder reached its climax about 1890. Evidences were abundant that the great business interests of the country were controlling the government for their own private benefit. The capitalists who financed the railroads, mines, mills, packing houses, grain elevators, and other great enterprises, received from Congress favors which destroyed competition and enormously increased private fortunes.

Every business is there to make money, and making a record is business. This tends to be forgotten by many.

Corporations are not in business to be social-welfare organizations; they are there to make money.

I'm not in business to make money.

It is difficult but not impossible to conduct strictly honest business. What is true is that honesty is incompatible with the amassing of a large fortune.

Regulation of private enterprise and not Government ownership or operation is the course rightly to be pursued in our relation to business.

You can invest as much as you want in infrastructure and education. But in the end people have to be allowed to make a profit from their work.

In the business world, bad news is usually good news - for somebody else.

Today, the concept of business is to make money. Making money is the name of the business.

Private industry's job is to make money. Private industry's job is to create a huge economic engine.

The only reason to do business is to make money; that's the only reason for doing business.

When morality comes up against profit, it is seldom that profit loses.

Profits in business always depend on the rate of interest: the higher the interest, the higher the rate of profit required.

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.

There isn't one thing the federal government does that anybody in Big Business would emulate, at least not in the profit sector.

The crowd doesn't give a crap as long as you bring the money in.

Once you privatize something, it becomes a for-profit business.

The business of America shouldn't be subsidizing business.

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

And you also have to do movies that are about commerce because that's what is required of the industry today.