Profit Priority Quotes

If you have a drug that is $100 for one course of therapy, and you know that you can charge $100,000, what should shareholders think when you say, 'I'd rather not take the heat'?

In the early 1970s, Milton Friedman argued that corporations should not be socially responsible because they had no mandate to be; they existed to make money, not to be charitable institutions. But in the economy of the 21st century, corporations cannot be socially responsible, if social responsibility is understood to mean sacrificing profits for the sake of some perceived social good. That's because competition has become so much more intense.

If you are focused on profits right out of the gate, you're gonna have the smallest profitable business that has ever been seen.

Corporations today, by their razor sharp focus on the 'bottom line' and quarterly earnings, have lost their ability to innovate.

Giving away food only encourages the poor not to starve. Increase productivity, not employment. Insure profits before we insure people Don’t be haters! We’re job creators. Bailout banks, not these losers (people evicted by banks foreclosing on their mortgages).

I don't think the objective of an abortion clinic is to try to talk women out of having the procedure. That obviously would not be positive for their bottom line.

It's whatever sells; it's the business of it.

I changed the mindset at Canon by getting people to realize that profits come first.

Book publishing was never a heaven "run by editors", and it is by no means today a hell "run by accountants." If our "sole interest" was "instant profit," not only would we never do any number of the things we actually do every day, we probably wouldn't be in book publishing at all.

Japanese tend to put sales and market share first. They make many products with the aim of raising sales. But then profits decline, and companies find themselves falling into debt... I changed the mindset at Canon by getting people to realize that profits come first.