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.
I was doing a campaign once for a manufacturer, and I couldn't think of an ideas, and I was kind of desperate about it. The night before I had to show something to my client I had a dream, an interesting dream. I woke up and for once in my life I wrote it down and went back to sleep Next morning I went to the office and had that dream out into a TV commercial which is still running thirty years after and which has made that particular product the leader in its field.
Look at the better players of my era - Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player, Lee Trevino, Raymond Floyd. They had pros they worked with from time to time, but out on Tour, thousands of miles from home, each of them learned to be his own best coach. I think Tiger can do the same.
Above all, recognize that if you have had success, you have also had luck β and with luck comes obligation. You owe a debt, and not just to your Gods. You owe a debt to the unlucky.
If I could apologise and go back and change history I would do. But the goal is still a goal, Argentina became world champions and I was the best player in the world
The Big Dream of any entrepreneur really has very little to do with the entrepreneur. If you truly love repairing automobiles, chances are, you'll be a lousy business owner. Likewise, if you are fascinated by debits and credits, the dream of building an accounting firm with you at the helm is probably best left unfulfilled.
The pursuit of excellence is less profitable than the pursuit of bigness, but it can be more satisfying.
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