Operations Quotes - Page 28

• You can make a lot of mistakes and still recover if you run an efficient operation. Or you can be brilliant and still go out of business if you're too inefficient.

  Sam Walton

  Running, Mistake, Brilliant

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• Assume that a surgeon has discovered how to do brain surgery, that he can do only one a month, that 1,000 persons a year need such an operation if they are to survive. How is the surgeon's scarce resource to be allocated? Charge whatever price is necessary to adjust supply and demand, say $50,000! 'For shame,' some will cry. 'Your market system will save only wealthy people.' For the moment, yes. But soon there will be hundreds of surgeons who will acquire the same skill; and, as in the case of the once scarce and expensive 'miracle drugs,' the price then will be within reach of all.

  Leonard Read

  Years, Skills, People

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• Private property creates for the individual a sphere in which he is free of the state. It sets limits to the operation of the authoritarian will.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Limits, Spheres, Individual

  Ludwig von Mises (2016). “Liberalism: The Classical Tradition: The Economist”, p.53, VM eBooks

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• Every day Big Government heaps demands and restrictions upon businesses that sink some enterprises, cause others to direct resources away from serving customers and instead toward jumping through hoops of lawyers and regulators, and prevent other operations from ever getting off the ground.

  Joel Miller

  Jumping, Government, Demand

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• We have to evolve means for obtaining energy from stores which are forever inexhaustible, to perfect methods which do not imply consumption and waste of any material whatever. I now feel sure that the realization of that idea is not far off. ...the possibilities of the development I refer to, namely, that of the operation of engines on any point of the earth by the energy of the medium.

  Nikola Tesla

  Mean, Ideas, Perfect

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• The necessity for co-operation between Europe and the United States is bigger than ever. Only by close transatlantic co-operation can we face the world's challenges.

  Jan Peter Balkenende

  Europe, Challenges, United States

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• It hurt the economic historians, the Marxists and the fabians, to admit that the Ten Hour Bill, the basic piece of 19th century legislation, came down from the top, out of aa nobleman's private feelings about the Gospel, or that the abolition of the slave trade was achieved, not through the operation of some "law" of profit and loss, but peurlet as the result of tyhe new humanitarianism of the Evangelicals.

  Barbara Tuchman

  Hurt, Loss, Law

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• We know that we can do it, but cannot describe in so many words how we do it, nor can we reduce it to a set of rules. At most, the observable facts of the indexing operation can be described.

  Hans H Wellisch

  Facts, Knows, Can Do

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• In a language, in the system of language, there are only differences. Therefore, a taxonomical operation an undertake the systematic, statistical, and classificatory inventory of a language.

  Jacques Derrida

  Differences, Inventory, Systematic

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• Anyone who believes in the natural and inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is obliged to accept that individuals have the right to buy and sell alcohol. That's why all the regulations that people take for granted-the restrictions on hours of operation, the ban on Sunday sales, the minimum distance from schools and churches, the minimum age, and the protection of local wineries from competition by wineries in other states-are illegitimate.

  Sheldon Richman

  Distance, Believe, School

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• The calamities of tragedy do not simply happen, nor are they sent; they proceed mainly from actions, and those the actions of men.We see a number of human beings placed in certain circumstances; and we see, arising from the co-operation of their characters in these circumstances, certain actions. These actions beget others, and these others beget others again, until this series of inter-connected deeds leads by an apparently inevitable sequence to a catastrophe.

  A. C. Bradley

  Character, Men, Numbers

  A. C. Bradley (2016). “Shakespearean Tragedy”, p.13, A. C. Bradley

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• Inflation is not a benign element in the economy's operation. It is, as it has always been, the most dangerous and destructive form of taxation.

  Robert Higgs

  Elements, Taxation, Economy

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• If I refuse to allow my leg to be amputated, its mortification and my death may prove that I was wrong; but if I let the leg go, nobody can ever prove that it would not have mortified had I been obstinate. Operation is therefore the safe side for the surgeon as well as the lucrative side.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Legs, May, Safe

  From his Preface on Doctors published with The Doctor's Dilemma (1911)

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• Yesterday, the Senate voted to approve President Clinton's decision to send troops to Bosnia. And they voted to change the name of that mission to "Operation Forget About Whitewater".

  David Letterman

  Names, Yesterday, Decision

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• But though a funded debt is not in the first instance, an absolute increase of Capital, or an augmentation of real wealth; yet by serving as a New power in the operation of industry, it has within certain bounds a tendency to increase the real wealth of a Community, in like manner as money borrowed by a thrifty farmer, to be laid out in the improvement of his farm may, in the end, add to his Stock of real riches.

  Alexander Hamilton

  Real, Community, Add

  Nancy Spannaus, Christopher White, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas More, Henry VIII (2015). “The Political Economy of the American Revolution”, p.425, Executive Intelligence Review

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• The war on terrorism was a bait and switch operation.

  Eric Alterman

  War, Bait, Terrorism

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• In every operation there is an above the line and a below the line. Above the line is what you do by the book. Below the line is how you do the job.

  John le Carre

  Jobs, Book, Lines

  John le Carre (2002). “A Perfect Spy”, p.316, Simon and Schuster

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• By [the] operations [of public improvement] new channels of communication will be opened between the States; the lines of separation will disappear, their interests will be identified, and their union cemented by new and indissoluble ties.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Communication, Ties, Unions

  Thomas Jefferson, Richard Holland Johnston, Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association of the United States “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson”

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• There is a patent office at the seat of government of the universe, whose managers are as much interested in the dispersion of seeds as anybody at Washington can be, and their operations are infinitely more extensive and regular.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Government, Office, Patents

  Henry David Thoreau (1992). “The Essays of Henry David Thoreau”, p.166, Rowman & Littlefield

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• This labour of the artist to discover a means of apprehending beneath matter and experience, beneath words, something different from their appearance, is of an exactly contrary nature to the operation in which pride, passion, intelligence and habit are constantly engaged within us when we spend our lives without self-communion, accumulating as though to hide our true impressions, the terminology for practical ends which we falsely call life.

  Marcel Proust

  Passion, Mean, Pride

  Marcel Proust (1949). “Remembrance of Things Past: Time regained”

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• A good sherris-sack hath a twofold operation in it. It
  ascends me into the brain,... makes it apprehensive, quick,
  forgetive, full of nimble, fiery, and delectable shapes.

  William Shakespeare

  Drinking, Wine, Imagination

  'Henry IV, Part 2' (1597) act 4, sc. 3, l. [103]

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• The recent extraordinary discovery in Photography, as applied in the operations of the mind, has reduced the art of novel-writing to the merest mechanical labour.

  Lewis Carroll

  Photography, Art, Writing

  Lewis Carroll (2015). “Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Other Tales”, p.967, Race Point Pub

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• An Israeli man's life was saved when he was given a Palestinian man's heart in a heart transplant operation. The guy is doing fine, but the bad news is, he can't stop throwing rocks at himself.

  Jay Leno

  Heart, Men, Rocks

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• My first guiding principle is this: willing and active co-operation between independent sovereign states. Europe will be stronger precisely because it has France as France, Spain as Spain, Britain as Britain, each with its own customs, traditions and identity. It would be folly to try to fit them into some sort of identikit European personality.

  Margaret Thatcher

  Independent, Guiding Principles, Europe

  Margaret Thatcher, Conservative Political Centre (Great Britain) (1988). “CPC [publications].”

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• You will enter the continent of Europe and, in conjunction with the other United Nations, undertake operations aimed at the heart of Germany and the destruction of her armed forces.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  Heart, Europe, Germany

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