76 Commerce Quotes

I've decided something: Commercial things really do stink. As soon as it becomes commercial for a mass market it really stinks.

It seems to me that today, if the artist wishes to be serious - to cut out a little original niche for himself, or at least preserve his own innocence of personality - he must once more sink himself in solitude. There is too much talk and gossip; pictures are apparently made, like stock-market prices, by competition of people eager for profit; in order to do anything at all we need (so to speak) the wit and ideas of our neighbors as much as the businessmen need the funds of others to win on the market. All this traffic sharpens our intelligence and falsifies our judgment.

Advertising is a racket, like the movies and the brokerage business. You cannot be honest without admitting that its constructive contribution to humanity is exactly minus zero.

I would like for my books to have been recognized posthumously, at least in capitalist countries, where they turn you into a kind of merchandise.

It's very important for folks to understand that when there's more trade, there's more commerce.

A people... who are possessed of the spirit of commerce, who see and who will pursue their advantages may achieve almost anything.

In all earlier civilizations, it should be remembered, commerce was treated as a narrow activity and by no means the senior sector in society.

Professional critics are incapable of distinguishing and appreciating either diamonds in the rough or gold in bars. They are traders, and in literature know only the coins that are current. Their critical lab has scales and weights, but neither crucible or touchstone.

I wish I'd never been an actor. I'd rather have been a streetwalker, selling my body, than selling my tears and my laughter, my grief and my joy.

People ask me if I am going on making cheesecake pictures now that I'm a star. My answer is that as long as there is a boy in Korea who wants a pinup of me, I'll go on posing for them.

America is now wholly given over to a d--d mob of scribbling women, and I should have no chance of success while the public taste is occupied with their trash - and should be ashamed of myself if I did succeed. What is the mystery of these innumerable editions of the Lamplighter, and other books neither better nor worse? - worse they could not be, and better they need not be, when they sell by 100,000.

The tradition of portrait painting, to embellish or idealize the subject, remains the aim of everyday and of commercial photography, but it has had a much more limited career in photography considered as art. Generally speaking, the honors have gone to the Cordelias.

Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains.

There is scarcely anything in the world that some man cannot make a little worse, and sell a little more cheaply. The person who buys on price alone is this man's lawful prey.

The trouble with us in America isn't that the poetry of life has turned to prose, but that it has turned to advertising copy.

I was never the kind of painter or sculptor who kept a shop.

When nations grow old, the Arts grow cold, And Commerce settles on every tree.

We used to build civilizations. Now we build shopping malls. [Copenhagen]

The current publishing scene is extremely good for the big, popular books. They sell them brilliantly, market them and all that. It is not good for the little books. And really valuable books have been allowed to go out of print. In the old days, the publishers knew that these difficult books, the books that appeal only to a minority, were very productive in the long run. Because they're probably the books that will be read in the next generation. It's heart-breaking how often I have to say when I'm giving talks, 'This book is out of print. This book is out of print.' It's a roll call of dead books.

Roughly speaking, the more one pays for food, the more sweat and spittle one is obliged to eat with it. ... Dirtiness is inherent in hotels and restaurants, because sound food is sacrificed to punctuality and smartness... The only food at the Hotel X which was ever prepared cleanly was the staff's.

They say I'm a revolutionary, but they're all wrong. I just seem like one because everyone else is so square and safe. Most artists just reinterpret, reinterpret, 'einterpret! They've all sold out to make a buck. Money is not my thing, and that's why I'm probably fucked. I'm more interested in doing the best I can to tell a story. As an artist, I want to interpret my feelings--not run across the street and ask what my mother thinks. I draw what I feel, which is no more than doing my job.

I don't care what they do with my book so long as the fucking cheque clears.

Young man, there is America - which at this day serves for little more than to amuse you with stories of savage men and uncouth manners; yet shall, before you taste of death, show itself equal to the whole of that commerce which now attracts the envy of the world.

When we speak of the commerce with our colonies, fiction lags after truth, invention is unfruitful, and imagination cold and barren.

They paved paradise And put up a parking lot With a pink hotel, a boutique and a swinging hot spot.

But what all the violence of the feudal institutions could never have effected, the silent and insensible operation of foreign commerce and manufactures gradually brought about. These gradually furnished the great proprietors with something for which they could exchange the whole surplus produce of their lands, and which they could consume themselves without sharing it either with tenants or retainers. All for ourselves and nothing for other people seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind. As soon, therefore, as they could find a method of consuming the whole value of their rents themselves, they had no disposition to share them with any other persons. For a pair of diamond buckles perhaps, or for something as frivolous and useless, they exchanged the maintenance, or what is the same thing, the price of the maintenance of a thousand men for a year, and with it the whole weight and authority which it could give them.

Commerce is so far from being beneficial to Arts or to Empire, that it is destructive of both, as all their History shows, for the above Reason of Individual Merit being its Great Hatred. Empires flourish till they become Commercial & then they are scattered abroad to the four winds

'Getting sued by your record company for making 'uncommercial records' after twenty years in the business, that's even better than receiving a Grammy' -- After Geffen Records had accused him of making 'albums impossible to promote'.

We, holding Art in our hands, confidently consider ourselves to be its masters; boldly we direct it, we renew, reform and manifest it; we sell it for money, use it to please those in power; turn to it at one moment for amusement - right down to popular songs and night-clubs, and at another - grabbing the nearest weapon, cork or cudgel - for the passing needs of politics and for narrow-minded social ends. But art is not defiled by our efforts, neither does it thereby depart from its true nature, but on each occasion and in each application it gives to us a part of its secret inner light.

They cherish his mem'ry, and them as sell picturs of his birthplace, etc., make it prof'tible cherishin' it.

'Twas on a sunny summer day I trod a mighty city's street, And when I started on my way My heart was full of fancies sweet; But soon, as nothing could be seen, But countenances sharp and keen, Nought heard or seen around but told Of something bought or something sold, And none that seemed to think or care That any save himself was there.

Don't like it interleague play. They [Major League Baseball] only have it because of two teams [the New York Mets and the New York Yankees]. It's all about the money.

Apparently the highest compliment our culture grants artists nowadays is to be in an ad - ideally naked and purring on the hood of a new car . I have adamantly and repeatedly refused this dubious honor.

Music has been taken over by commercialism or capitalism or whatever it is.

The Constitution was made chiefly because of the demands of Commerce. Thus it was at the outset a merchant's machine, which the other interests of the country, the land and labor interests, even then foreboded would destroy their liberties. In vain their jealousy of its central power made enact the first twelve amendments. In vain they endeavored to set bounds over which the federal power dare not trench. In vain they enacted into general law the freedom of speech, of the press, of assemblage and petition. All of these things we see ridden roughshod upon every day, and have so seen with more or less intermission since the beginning of the nineteenth century. At this day, every police lieutenant considers himself, and rightly so, as more powerful than the General Law of the Union.

I wrote 'Eat It' because I wanted to buy a house. It worked.

[in a Prune Candy commercial, singing] Dragon foot, bamboo pole, little mouse, Chinese boy, Prune Candy!

I think every gentleman on this floor is as well satisfied as I am that Duluth is destined to become the commercial metropolis of the universe, and that this road should be built at once.

'Whatever you need sold I'll sell it. Bring in a tank and I'll sell the fuckin thing.' (from 'Car Salesman')

The idea that you can merchandise candidates for high office like breakfast cereal - that you can gather votes like box tops - is, I think, the ultimate indignity to the democratic process.

It is well-known what a middleman is: he is a man who bamboozles one party and plunders the other.

We are indeed a nation of shopkeepers.

Avarice, the spur of industry, is so obstinate a passion, and works its way through so many real dangers and difficulties, that it is not likely to be scared by an imaginary danger, which is so small, that it scarcely admits of calculation. Commerce, therefore, in my opinion, is apt to decay in absolute governments, not because it is there less secure, but because it is less honourable.

The temple is holy because it is not for sale.

Richard Nixon: was just offered $2 million by Schick to do a television commercial - for Gillette.

Chico: One dollar and you'll remember me all your life. Groucho: That's the most nauseating proposition I ever had.

I'm not a Blockbuster boy, I never wanted to be. (1999)

Of all the creative work produced by humans anywhere, a tiny fraction has continuing commercial value. For that tiny fraction, the copyright is a crucially important legal device. For that tiny fraction, the copyright creates incentives to produce and distribute the creative work. For that tiny fraction, the copyright acts as an 'engine of free expression.' But even for that tiny fraction, the actual time during which the creative work has a commercial life is extremely short. As I've indicated, most books go out of print within one year. The same is true of music and film. Commercial culture is sharklike. It must keep moving. And when a creative work falls out of favor with the commercial distributors, the commercial life ends.

Where wealth and freedom reign contentment fails, And honor sinks where commerce long prevails.

Un pintor es un hombre que pinta lo que vende. Un artista, en cambio, es un hombre que vende lo que pinta.

If Botticelli were alive today he'd be working for Vogue.

The only reason I made a commercial for American Express was to pay for my American Express bill.

Scientific truth is too beautiful to be sacrificed for the sake of light entertainment or money. Astrology is an aesthetic affront. It cheapens astronomy, like using Beethoven for commercial jingles.

'How can you put out a meaningful drama when every fifteen minutes proceedings are interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits with toilet paper? No dramatic art form should be dictated and controlled by men whose training and insticts are cut of an entirely different cloth. The fact remains that these gentlemen sell consumer goods, not an art form.'

There will presently be no room in the world for things; it will be filled up with the advertisements of things.

The English... are a nation of shopkeepers