In business, the earning of profit is something more than an incident of success. It is an essential condition of success. It is an essential condition of success because the continued absence of profit itself spells failure.
Interpretation
Profit is a fundamental requirement for true success in business.
This quote emphasizes that profit is not merely a fortunate outcome of successful business practices, but rather a crucial component that defines success itself. Without profit, a business cannot sustain itself, and thus, its continued operation is threatened; therefore, profit is indispensable for achieving and maintaining success in the business world.
In practice
In a business meeting discussing quarterly results, one might use this quote to highlight the necessity of profit.
Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.
Those who won our independence believed that the final end of the state was to make men free to develop their faculties... They valued liberty both as an end and as a means. They believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty... that public discussion is a political duty; and that this should be a fundamental principle of the American government.
Experience teaches us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent.
When those of Jewish blood exhibit moral or intellectual superiority, genius or special talent, we feel pride in them, even if they have abjured the faith like Spinoza, Marx, Disraeli or Heine. Despite the meditations of pundits or the decrees of council, our own instincts and acts, and those of others, have defined for us the term 'Jew.'
America has believed that in differentiation, not in uniformity, lies the path of progress. It acted on this belief; it has advanced human happiness, and it has prospered.
If you will just start with the idea that this is a hard world, it will all be much simpler.
Do not search for SUCCESS off in the distance, but instead recognize it and grasp it right where you are!
Don't measure yourself by what you have accomplished, but by what you should have accomplished with your ability.
Success depends upon previous preparation, and without such preparation there is sure to be failure.
Because IQ tests favor memory skills and logic, overlooking artistic creativity, insight, resiliency, emotional reserves, sensory gifts, and life experience, they can't really predict success, let alone satisfaction.
My advice for an entrepreneur just starting out is to differentiate yourself. Why are you different? What’s important about you? Why does the customer need you?
I look for the entrepreneur to capture my attention. If you don't come out with a great presentation, you're dead. That's a big red flag.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.