Ben Cohen Quotes

An individual, in promoting his own interest, may injure the public interest; a nation, in promoting the general welfare, may check the interest of a part of its members.

Business need to go beyond the interest of their companies to the communities they serve.

For years I thought what was good for our country was good for General Motors and vice versa. The difference did not exist. Our company is too big. It goes with the welfare of the country.

Business must be the solution, not the problem.

Can you imagine what a different world we will live in when businesses do what's right for the communities and the environment in everything they do?

I believe corporations that benefit from everything America has to offer should feel (ph) some sense of responsibility, not just to their biggest shareholders, but to their workers, to their customers, to their communities and, yes, to our country.

Companies should increasingly see themselves as major corporate citizens with a wider responsibility to the community. Nothing less than their reputation - their image - is at stake.

Society can't wait. It's sad there are so many entrepreneurs, business successes and venture capitalists who give no thought to society.

There is only one social responsibility of business

The acceptance of corporatism causes us to deny and undermine the legitimacy of the individual as citizen in a democracy. The result of such a denial is a growing imbalance which leads to our adoration of self-interest and our denial of the public good.

If you're not in the business to improve society, you shouldn't be in business.

Self-interest is hostile to the common good, but enlightened self-interest is not. And this is the best key to the meaning of enlightenment.

We have the enormous opportunity in our hands to make a positive difference for business, people, and the planet.

Benefit to the community precedes benefit to the individual.

The call now is for each of us to ask ourselves: are we doing all we can to help build the country of our dreams?

Corporations are economic entities, to be sure, but they are also social institutions that must justify their existence by their overall contribution to society.

The corporation was originally conceived as a public institution whose purpose was to serve national interests and advance the public good.

I believe that today's businesses - regardless of their size - must be prepared to do good in societies around the globe. I am cautiously optimistic that we can make the world a far better, safer and more equitable place - but business and enterprise must sit at the heart of this process.

I was very lucky to find a career which let me travel, sourcing stores in other countries, just the opportunities of the career in design and finance and all the things that make retailing - my career - interesting to me. That's why I started looking at community responsibility. I felt I should give of myself.

Love or affection towards an individual or nation, is indicated by good action snot merely be words. The adoration towards nation is expressed by works of welfare equally done by the ruler and theruled. The ruler himself must be engatged, in welfare of th country and also should select officials examining their involvement with the public god. Self-centered people greedy of the power should be kept away

The self-bound individual always forgets that his self would be safeguarded better and automatically the more he prepares himself for the welfare of mankind, and that in this respect no limits are set for him.

The challenge I set before anyone who condemns private-sector business is this: If you are a socially conscious person, why don't you run your business in a way that will help achieve social objectives?

There is one and only one social responsibility of business - to use it resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud.

It is important for this country to make its people so obsessed with their own liberal individualism that they do not have time to think about a world larger than self.

Understand and be confident that each of us can make a difference by caring and acting in small as well as big ways.